The Tale of Nora Rigg
by ManMadeOfLasers
Summary: A novelization of a Fallout 4 play through, filled with dark humor, bad jokes, and cursing. This story will attempt to show the the kind of characterization that Fallout has trouble expressing, and will try to accurately depict the emotional range of the game. Rating based on unrepentant bad language, and to cover for anything untoward that may pop up.
1. Chapter 1

The Tale of Nora Rigg -/- Chapter One

* * *

I feel like I can't breathe. I must have been unconscious, and while not being able to breathe is hardly the worst way I've ever woken up (the day after my senior prom, my honeymoon, and the day after Nate got back from Alaska all come to mind), it certainly sucks. I feel a pull from the air, it rushes across my skin, and all the air or gas or whatever around me rushes down to my feet. It passes my face pulling very down and suddenly I can get air in my lungs. It feels like some hold over my ability to think has been released, and suddenly the fog clears enough for me to realize that I'm cold.

Really, really god damn cold.

The world seems to expand around me, and I fall to my knees. There's some kind of alarm blaring, and a very distant part of my mind catches the words 'evacuate immediately', but despite the alarm and the suffocation and the bone deep horror right in front of me, all I can feel is the cold.

It burns.

Across all of my skin, from my hair to my feet, even my insides feel like they're burning from the cold. Nate was always talking about how cold it had been in Alaska, in his letters he joked during winter for like three years about how some of the guys would go out of their way to find Chinese flamer units, just so the burn they felt was something other than their nerves shutting down. At least I thought he was joking at first.

It took exactly one winter for me to figure out that these weren't jokes. Nate was _**IS**_ a good man. I took me one whole winter to realize the jokes were a coping mechanism and that several of his friends actually committed suicide by Chinese flamer in order to feel something.

Of course this thought is just my brain trying to distract itself from shock. Or maybe it's the shock directly? It's not terribly surprising I would turn to examples of suicide in order to deflect from what I'm seeing. Can you know you're going into shock?

Finally I get a shaky breath in, and that god awful screaming stops.

Oh Christ, that was me.

Breathe in. Hold for a count of four. Breathe out. My count to four is a lot faster than it should be, but the exercise I used to use in the office to stop from shouting at Jon Widmark serves me well. It's almost enough to hide me from the horror that been steadily leaking in at the edges of my thoughts since I woke up.

I bring myself to my knees, a patter of water splashing the back of my neck and wetting my hair. The water brings more cold, but it beats the hell out of the floor, which feels like it's drawing whatever heat I have straight out of me.

I almost can't do it. I don't want to. With extreme reluctance I straighten my back and draw my eyes up the... pod thing (?) in front of me. I have no idea why we didn't fucking see it coming in. Seeing a Chinese nuke hit what had to have been West Roxbury is enough to scare the wits out of anyone, it's hard to hold it against myself, but what would have been different had we known? The pipes should have tipped us off, or the huge containers of gas, or the fucking frost, _fuck its cold!_

He's in pod C6, and if the red warning label is to be believed, evidently I should stand clear. The cursed thing has a four foot swing. I pull my eyes up across the warnings and the labels and all of the shit, and I rest them on his face.

As rugged as the day we married at that stupid fucking gazebo in the Boston Commons of all places. His mother was so insistent. "The last green in the city that wasn't radioactive", she said. God rest her soul now, I suppose. It's hard to look at him. I wish I hadn't thought of our wedding. I got my lipstick all over the side of his mouth, tripping on those idiot three inch heels when he lifted my veil, and looking at the red leaking from the side of his mouth just _hurts_.

I close my eyes and concentrate. I can't feel my toes, and those whole 'feet' things are also a bit shaky down there. With a lot of effort I get them underneath me, and I can feel every joint in my body pop as I stand up.

I say stand up, but I can't lie even in my own head, the hunchback of Notre-Dame would look at me and feel bad.

It gets a bit easier to move around the more I do it, but my hands still feel like they're in mittens as I scrabble at the control panel next to his pod. The big red lever is right there, but my fingers are too dumb to get at the thing. It takes me a minute, but I get my palm at the right angle and put enough of my weight behind it to push it up.

There's a big release of pressure, and I can hear gas rushing back through pipes to the container above me, I watch the gas flow down to the bottom of the pod and chunks of ice flake off the edges as the door pops, automatically rising out of the way.

Now the only thing between me and the man I love is my unwillingness to recognize that he's dead. I step in front of him, and, honestly, I watched it happen but I'm still having a hard time believing what I'm seeing.

His eyes are closed, his head listing to the left. I have to resist zipping his jumpsuit the whole way. He used to do the same thing with his army fatigues. He always thought the touch of chest hair made him look manly, I thought it made him look like an idiot. It was a normal argument that I usually resolved by buttoning his shirt for him and convincing him he was roguish enough without the chest fuzz.

Now, I just don't want to touch the hole the bullet left in him.

I saw this enough when I worked with Captain Widmark, a .44 magnum at close range.

I will fucking see it again too, on the man with the scar across his eye.

I took his hand. I could see the ice crystals across the surface of his skin. My body was warm enough to melt my own, but he would never be warm again. He would never be anything again. My stupid useless fingers teased his ring from his hand, and by some miracle I managed to get it into a pocket without dropping it.

Nate's brother used to pay a hundred dollars a month into a cryogenic fund. When he died they were supposed to cut off his head, and store it for him. One day in the future, they said, we'd have the technology to bring a head back to life.

I've seen robo-brains. I didn't buy it.

I couldn't help the watery chuckle that left me as I pulled the red lever on the pod's console back down. Maybe one day in the future we'll have a cure for 'bullet wound in the chest'. The joke is the only thing holding me together.

I have to hold it together.

Somewhere out there a _dead_ man has my son.

With only a little stumbling I begin to make my way out of the room. I don't want to do anything, and my legs feel dead, and my body feels dead, and it's so goddamn cold I can still see my breath, but Shaun is out there. And more honestly, I need to go anywhere not here.

The door doesn't respond to my pounding on it, but the damn things are supposed to be pressure sensitive. One of the first cases I had ever tried was charging Vault-Tec on behalf of a construction worker that found out how their sensors worked the hard way when one malfunctioned and the pressure door blinked open long enough for his wrist to pass through.

I won the case, everything about Vault 114's construction was a shit show, but that's not a comfort right now. With an awkward jump I put all my weight down on the foot bar, and crack it open. I take the first doorway I find, and come into a room that looks about the same as the one I've left. Cryogenic pods all across the room, and what has to be coolant tanks everywhere.

The control bank near the door is dead. I flip a few switches idly and nothing happens. The room does bear some fruit, on a table a few feet away is a brand new jumpsuit, one that doesn't smell like mildew and twenty years of ass. As I shamble to the package, my attention is drawn to the blinking lights of a working computer on the other side of the room.

It takes me another minute to get there, every step feels like agony, but the agony is contained in my feet. The rest of me seems to be thawing nicely. As I hold the shrink wrapped Vault-Tec uniform under one arm I boot the system, and none of the information is good. I learn two important things.

I'm the only survivor, and this is not an accident.

Someone hacked into the vault systems remotely, which in fairness isn't that hard. Anyone who can read a magazine can access the old Termlink BIOS all RobCo machines are loaded with. In this case though they sent someone in to cause trouble manually. It has to be the work of Scar-face.

I make my way out of the room, and the blaring alarms calling for everyone to vacate the vault penetrate the haze of my thoughts. I need to get the hell out of here.

As I wander around looking for an exit I find the largest fucking cockroach I have ever seen, and in short order, I find a baton to defend myself from it.

I fucking hate bugs.

My wandering nets me fifty bucks and a stim pack. I have to resist the urge to inject myself immediately. My toes feel like fire with every step, and given that my fingers are well enough to operate door bypasses, I'm starting to get worried.

I have to beat a few roaches the size of my thighs to death, but I make my way to what seems to be the vault overseer's office and the only open path to the exit. As soon as I get the door open, I begin worrying. There's a skeleton in a Vault-Tec lab coat, spilled across a chair that has fallen back from a desk. On the desk there is a handgun, and an open box of ammunition missing one bullet.

Why did the overseer kill himself?

I page through his terminal, only to find the diaries of an asshole who had an unhealthy fascination with cryogenic stuff and a bad reaction to being put in charge. It doesn't explain why he offed himself, but I can at least stop feeling bad.

I fill the magazine on the handgun from the box on the desk, and pocket everything. His security lock-up gets me another pistol, and I head to his rooms behind the desk to see if there is anything else I can use. With four stimpacs I risk injecting one into each leg. The pain in my toes clears up a bit, but not enough to make me actually feel better. I need to get out of here, then I'll take a look. I feel like if I see the damage I won't be able to force myself to go on.

Most folks keep a spare stimpac in their medicine cabinets. So I head to the overseer's to see if I can replace the one I've used. Instead I find Rad-X and remember why I entered the vault in the first place.

The fucking communists dropped a nuke outside.

Is it any better out there than in here? _Is my son out there in some radioactive hellscape!?_

Breathe.

Scar-face had to have come from somewhere. I've found exactly zero evidence of any kind of tunnel breaching the vault. The whole thing was supposed to have been carved into bedrock anyway. There were other people with scar-face too, but my memory is too fuzzy to place anything.

He had to have come from outside.

I have no better ideas.

With the Overseer's console I open the route to the door, and move on. I have to put shots into seven or eight more roaches, and every time I pull the trigger I have to fight to keep tears from my eyes.

Nate taught me to shoot.

Nate knew this was going to happen. He was pushing me to buy a cabin he had picked out in the Appalachians. I humored him and we would go to 'Urban Survivalist' classes on the weekends. It broke the monotony before we had Shaun, and it was cheaper than a cabin.

Would it have made a difference?

The vault entrance held more skeletons. I've seen enough crime scene investigation photos to be able to generally figure one out, but the skeletons and overturned desks didn't give me much to work with. I have no idea what the hell happened in this vault, or why the hell I'm the only one left.

Scar-face called me The Spare.

Like that was supposed to mean something.

Were these people dead before that or after?

I realize that I don't feel like poking around skeletons more than I feel like figuring this out. My feet are still agony located at the bottom of a well of fucking cold.

It occurs to me that I may not be good at metaphors.

On the floor next to the door's control console is a pip-boy, which is the best development I've seen since I woke up. It has a dead man's severed arm in it, which I am much less enthusiastic about. Taking care to not touch bones (I tell myself it's out of respect for the dead, but it rings hollow. I really don't want to touch a dead guy.) I separate him from his fantastic wrist computer, and I strap it to my arm.

It boots with no problem, which is a relief. Vault-Tec may have hired shit contractors in Boston, but no one could deny their tech was cutting edge, and while 'Urban Survivalist' training taught me to wire a crappy generator from a field stripped car, repairs to micro-circuitry are well beyond me.

I flip through a few screens, it looks the pip-boy is interfacing with the Vault-Tec suit somehow, but I stop dead at the date.

9:01 am, October twenty-third, 2287.

I've been frozen in this hell hole for two hundred and ten years.

My legs almost fall from beneath me, a hand on the safety railing is the only thing keeping me up. Two hundred and ten years.

What the fuck.

Breathe in. Hold for a count of four. Breathe out.

Breathe in. Hold for a count of four. Breathe out.

I connect the pip-boy's external physical port to the control console. My fist smashing the big red button causes the vault door to open. Screeching metal, a humming generator. My feet idly trace a path over a catwalk, and onto an elevator.

I blink as sunshine crosses my face, and the Geiger counter on my wrist begins slowly ticking.

A wasteland stretches before me. A place I once lived.

They killed my husband.

They took my son.

My name is Nora Rigg.

I am the Sole Survivor.


	2. Chapter 2

The Tale of Nora Rigg -/- Chapter Two

* * *

Now that I'm outside, it feels hot.

And I can hear my heartbeat.

Not like my heart is beating so loud I can hear it, more like my ears are drumming and I can hear the blood pumping.

It's weird in a way that I might be interested in exploring if I hadn't just witnessed my family be murdered and kidnapped.

Every step still feels like knives are being forced into my feet, but it's been long enough, and I feel hot enough, that it feels like those stabbing knives haven't been switched out for new ones in a while. The pain's duller, and throbbing, and as I walk past more actual skeletons I begin to realize that I may not be able to maintain my previously strict 'no touching dead people' policy.

Three years working with the Boston police, I held strong. God damn it.

I pass over a nice little river, again, beautiful were I anybody but me in any situation but mine, and as soon as I can drag my eyes away from the ground, I'm faced with the actual truth of the new world.

...

Sanctuary Hills, in all of it's genuinely amazing diversity, is now a fucking shit hole.

...

The Able's house, the Whitfield's, even Mrs. & Mrs. Polberry's place. All the wall panels are peeling off the outside, I can't see a single roof that qualifies as 'rain-proof', and _every_ single car is a rusted out wreck.

A few more agonizing steps take me out to the road, and a dull buzzing draws me to a blessedly familiar sight. Codsworth, sweet, naive, uptight Codsworth. His box was still in the laundry room and we were still on the second canister of his fuel.

Or we were...?

What the fuck, it's been 200 years, how in the hell in my robot still up and about?

"As I live and breathe! It's... It's _really_ you!"

He still has that accent. Good god. You'd think that after two centuries he'd pick up something a bit more local.

"Codsworth! You're still here! How are you still here?"

The poor dear's eye-pod things lifted with pride, "Well of course I'm still here, surely you don't think a little radiation would deter the pride of General Atomics International. But you seem worse for wear, best not let Hubby see you in this state! Where is sir?"

I technically heard everything he said, but I'm still probably only about 30% present. I latch onto the last thing I actually catch, "They... they killed him."

He keeps talking, the accent grating nearly as much as it had when we bought him. I can't deny that General Atomics makes a hell of a robot. The _actual_ fucking end of the world stands as a strong enough testament to their engineering. I just wish they could have done something a bit smoother. The British butler thing is solid, but c'mon. Give me James Earl Jones, Michael Caine, hell, David Attenborough, there should be more than enough footage of all of them to make a record.

"-Shaun does so love that game. Is the lad... with you...?"

His eye stalks noticeably sort of, frizz about, looking for him.

"He's gone, goddamn it! Someone took him! They stole my baby!"

It's gotten hotter somehow and the beating in my ears, which had faded slightly, was back in full force.

"It's worse than I thought. Hmm hmm. You're suffering from... hunger-induced paranoia," because the last nine or so hours I've been awake aren't the kind of thing to teach me that it's not just paranoia, they really are out to get me, "Not eating properly for 200 years will do that, I'm afraid."

He's not wrong, but even for an eternally uptight robot, that's an odd conclusion to jump to. I mean I'd honestly blame the radioactive cockroach bite on my shin before I went to paranoia. It's a good thing I'm beginning to go numb below said bite, or standing around here might get annoying quickly.

"Codsworth, you're acting... a little bit weird. What's wrong?"

And then it comes just pouring out of the poor thing, "Oh mum, it's been horrible! Two centuries with no one to talk to, no one to serve. I spent the first ten years just trying to keep the floors waxed, but nothing gets out nuclear fallout from vinyl wood. _**Nothing!**_ And don't get me started about the futility of dusting a collapsed house. And the car! How do you polish rust!?"

How would there be rust? Radiation exposure, gamma particle, or alpha particle (probably the most likely exposure given the proximity to an actual bomb) both don't cause rust. They all have a nasty habit of causing outright combustion, cancer, melting, and if the scientific journals are to be believed, a considerable amount of hydrogen embrittlement, but rust? Maybe he took a ding and went offline for a few dozen years? Maybe I actually am going through shock and this whole thing probably isn't very good for me is it? I need to focus.

"Whoa, whoa. Focus, Codsworth."

"I am... I will... I'm afraid I don't know anything mum. The bombs came, and all of you left in such a hurry. I thought for certain you and your family were... dead."

What do you say to that? Programming or not, the guy did stay here and keep our terrifying mutated bushes trimmed, with precision, for two centuries. I _definitely_ don't have words, but then I also don't have good feeling below the shin, so I don't know.

"I did find this holotape. I believe sir was going to present it to you. As a surprise. But then, well... everything 'happened'."

Good god, it's officially the apocalypse, I need to be stronger than this.

Codsworth uses his freaky pinch-y arm to hand me a holotape that he had stored... somewhere... and sweet christ here come the tears. I want to make a joke. I want to say I've got radiation in my eye or something, in the name of Rodney Dangerfield there's a joke there somewhere, but instead I'm just crying quietly while I look at the stupid fucking orange and white box.

I want to believe that I can just walk into my house.

I can walk in, sit on that couch we paid way too much for, and pop this thing into the holo player that we also paid way too much for. Nate's mom was _furious_ about nearly all of our furniture, which was _delightful_. That old bat had far and away too much furniture, it figured that she'd be hurt that we wouldn't take it.

Blinking isn't clearing my vision. I feel pretty detached from this whole deal, but I still can't deal with what I'm seeing.

Nate absolutely would.

He did this kind of terrible and sappy stuff all the time. I mean I found one of the more explicit notes he left me in a lunch meeting with an actual circuit court judge once. It was one of the most amazing, and least professional, work experiences I had ever had.

As soon as I had my hands on it, I was afraid I would squeeze too hard and break the damn thing.

"Now. Enough feeling sorry for myself. Shall we search the neighborhood together? Sir and young Shaun may turn up yet!"

That fucking robot would.

I still can't look up from the holotape.

It comes out of me at a whisper, "There's nothing left here. It's all gone."

"As you wish, Mum. I'll be here maintaining the property and waiting for you should you need me, mum."

Idly, I nod and give the robot a wave, which the poor fucking thing interprets as an order to return to its duties.

With nothing else, actually nothing else in the entirety of butt-fucking creation, to do, I decide to take care of myself. I am absolutely numb beneath the knee and that whole unfeeling region calls out to me for care.

So what can I do.

My fucking home, which I spent a lot more money than it was worth, and was set to spend more than twice what it was worth on over the next decade, had walls which were only fractionally more secure than the holes in those same walls. If I wanted any kind of safety, the answer was not here.

The delightful and now absolutely dead lesbians next door appear to be in the same boat as me, and honestly even the weirdo down the street, for all _his_ paranoia, is right with us. No one's house is still structurally secure.

Weird old Mr. DePietro though...

He was always bitching about how the apocalypse was coming, and now... well now honestly I'm the asshole here. Nate and I used to laugh at him during the neighborhood barbeques with the rest of the locals.

I limp my way to his place, and then to his much publicized bunker at the back of his home. Inside I find of a bunch of disturbingly well preserved food, a few bottle of disturbingly well preserved beer, and a lumpy mattress that doesn't appear to have mutated under radiation exposure.

For right now, I know the score. If I even begin to approach the horizontal I am going to be down for the count, nothing short of a second nuclear goddamn apocalypse will wake me. So I have to be careful.

I sit on the floor in front of the bed, and with all due care remove my leather boots.

What I find is not encouraging.

My feet are only pink and flesh colored by the most technical definition of the words. Dark blue and frost burned are both much better descriptors. I have four stimpacs left, and I take all of them and empty them into the skin between my toes.

I remember hearing about some idiot musician doing this with real drugs once upon a time. All I can do is pray that the injection of military grade futuristic miracle drugs does something for my poor feet. I have a vague memory of a documentary of the Donner party showcasing limbs with a similar color. Thankfully they were a good hundred and fifty years before stimpacs were common, so I can only count my blessings.

Once the sweet delicious drugs are in my system, I've officially done what I could. If I die here, and join Nate, then it happens after I've done all I can. Codsworth certainly isn't helping, so I've officially tried. Whatever happens, no one can criticize me.

I heave myself into the lumpy mattress, and pull the sheet at the bottom over myself. This is only a good bed in the most technical sense, at least per pre-apocalypse standards. I have no idea what counts as good these days.

Or if things even count as good these days.

Christ.

I'm going to die of some fucking infection alone in the fucking "neighborhood of the future", with the corpses of biracial couples and lesbians all around me. I've got nothing against them, but fuck me if I really wouldn't rather have the body of my FUCKING HUSBAND with me goddamn fuck.

I sigh, very emphatically.

Then, with great relish, I fall asleep.

* * *

Author's Note [SPOILER ALERT]: Fallout 4 is a lot of fun. There's a fairly compelling reason why I had nearly 350 hours in the game before I started this story. With that said, it's tough to compare it's story or 'RPG-ness', for lack of a better word, to Fallout Three or Fallout New Vegas, because that is no contest. In my opinion Three had more interesting characters, and a larger set of things to discover, and I feel New Vegas had an almost incomparably larger set of story possibilities and overall options. I didn't even like the Mojave, as an environment for a game to take place in I hated it, but I still have played six characters on full run throughs of it just to see everything.

Now that I've complained, Fallout 4. It is a strong and powerful narrative, and that narrative is very imperfectly expressed by the mechanics of the game. Take when you go to the institute for the first time, for instance. All of that effort, putting the teleporter together, prepping for what would seem like it should be a huge fight, and it ends in a conversation with your aged son. That _should_ have been a huge emotional moment. Instead, I got to watch Nora's tearful face and voice try to shine through an X-01 power armor helmet, glowing blue eyes and all.

The game just doesn't mechanically lend itself to expressing the real emotion of that moment. It's something another game would show through a cutscene, but that's just not how Fallout does business. And to be clear, this is something that Three and New Vegas struggled with as well. In Three however, the Vault Dweller had never seen the surface, and in New Vegas the Courier had lost all of their memories. The Sole Survivor _knew_ Boston. They had likely lived there for years. There should have been heart wrenching nostalgia all over the place, and instead they just transition instantly to scavving and murdering like it was normal. Thats why I'm writing this.

I wanted to take a stab at novelizing a playthrough of Fallout 4. I don't know how well it will work out, my writing will likely be guided by the way I play my own Nora Rigg alongside this story, and you all of course know how it will end. I just hope I can give you a good ride.


	3. Chapter 3

The Tale of Nora Rigg -/- Chapter Three

* * *

As I wake up, three things occur to me.

One, I have no toothpaste here, in the post-apocalyptic future.

Two, the odds of me getting toothpaste, a toothbrush, and water without (what I can only assume to be) terrible radioactive particles are slim to... Who am I kidding, the odds are fucking zero.

Three, I absolutely, completely, and without any kind of reservation, cannot stay here.

The bed sucks, the stupid tiny cavern sucks, the stupid uptight robot who I didn't like 200 years ago sucks, and honestly this whole fucking neighborhood with its dead futuristic planning can kiss my ass. There's also that evidence that weird old Mr. DePietro had a lot more going for him than any of us thought. The two bars of gold that each felt like they weighed five pounds, and the two stacks of notes were each good clues, so I feel like even more of an ass.

I can't even look at this stupid fucking doomsday shelter without thinking about the time Nate and I got to look at this place and laughed ourselves silly over how small and stupid of a fallout shelter this would be.

If I stay here for one more fucking minute I am going to burst into tears for only the fifth time in fucking two hours.

So I don't.

Putting through the houses around here gets me solid evidence one of my neighbors was a drug dealer, and five more stimpacs. Also a bottle of Day-Tripper that I definitely did not put into my backpack, and definitely do not plan on taking later tonight once I find a nice secure little cave.

I definitely am not banking on taking that later tonight, getting high off my ass, and avoiding feeling things about how fucked my whole situation is. A part of me feels like making this kind of idiotic decision is a bad thing, but the majority of my inner voices are telling that other part of me to get stuffed on account of both the end of the world and the fact that I am now alone in said ended world.

It's possible I'm not handling this well.

By the time I'm done looking around the town I've got a few more magazines, and a few more bullets. Also a few more chems courtesy of my former good friend, the drug dealer.

So.

Day one after I fixed my goddamn feet I was nearly ready to set out, before I got the stomach rumblies and I realized a few things. I need water. I need food. I need shelter. I would prefer pure water, non-irradiated food, and reinforced concrete shelter. I have a strong feeling that long term I'm not going to end up with any of these. I have some preserved food, and I have a few liters of purified water for now, but none of its gonna last.

I have to move on somewhere and do something. Sanctuary Hills sure as hell isn't going to cut it.

What the fuck am I going to do.

I don't think of it as a question, because it's not a question. I'm near-on completely fucked no matter what I do, so charging blindly ahead it is.

My feet lead me to the entrance to sanctuary, to the idiotic wooden bridge that Nate and I both argued against when it was first made.

Concrete was a better idea, we said. Of course the same wooden bridge being mostly there fucking two hundred ten years later says we were wrong, but in the face of the apocalypse, let it be said that I stuck to my guns, the wooden bridge (with big broken down segments!) is still a dumb idea.

On the immediate other side of the bridge I encounter a dead man, evidently bled out, and a terrifying dog with big patches of fur missing and a tire iron stabbed straight through it's chest. It doesn't take a crime scene analyst to figure out what happened. The dog died first, and the guy was too wounded to make it out, and with no stimpacs...

From the blood on the ground, it wasn't quick.

I still have a lot of questions, why Codsworth didn't hear and come by, why nothing worse did...

I don't want to know. It's better if I don't know. With an effort I turn my head away.

As far as I'm concerned just two weeks ago I was looking at something a lot like this in a pit near that Dunwich quarry.

Fucking Dunwich.

I walk carefully down the road towards the Red Rocket station, sticking to the right and trying my best to not show a profile to anyone against the huge rock outcropping there. No sense in rushing, going fast will just get me tired, and probably noticed by insane irradiated mutant chinchillas and fucking aliens. Who knows.

There is a good time to take stupid risks, and the fuck awful politicians from the pre-apocalypse filled the entire human race's allotment if you ask me.

As I reach the station a terribly familiar, and at this point fucking anachronistic, sounds reaches my ears. The whining of a dog.

Because that's not fucking terrifying.

I've seen exactly one dog since the apocalypse, and it had its jaws buried in some unlucky fuck's thigh.

I should curse less.

Fuck it.

There's a green station wagon rusting in the road, which I press my back against. The dog is probably thirty or forty feet away and I can still hear it's disturbingly deep whine.

It's... quiet out here.

As if I needed more evidence of the end of the world.

I crouch to keep my profile low, and try to be as stealthy as I can. There are a troubling number of mutated plants around me, but thankfully none of them have dropped dry twigs. I look down at my feet to be sure I'm not about to break a twig, and I learn something even more troubling. It isn't that there aren't twigs, it's that horrible future mutant twigs have the consistency of rubber.

Cool, I guess.

The Red Rocket station is missing its D, C, and T. A not insignificant part of me is disappointed that the remaining letters don't spell something dirty. It's a shame reality doesn't share my sense of humor.

And holy shit, a German shepherd the size of a small horse is sort of scrabbling at one of the supports of the Red Rocket overhang. ( **!** ) It has a lot more fur than the last dog I found, which may or may not be good. There were a lot of folks that thought radiation would make people all Grognak-y, and there were a lot of folks that correctly pointed out that radiation induced genetic mutation was much, _much_ more likely to just give you four or five different kinds of cancer and allow you the pleasure of wasting away slowly while filled to the brim with tumors.

So far it looks like a bit of both?

The dog continues to scratch at the post, whining in a low tone. Were there nuclear dog treats up there or something?

Do I want to fight a fucking gigantic dog? What does a treat for a post-apocalyptic super dog even look like?

I pop open a pocket and retrieve one of the key supplies I was able to scavenge from Sanctuary Hills, a box of Salisbury Steak, I pull the foil pouch and tear it, exposing the still disturbingly juicy and fragrant contents to the air.

The dog immediately perks up, abandoning the support it was scratching at (are those claws marks in the steel!?) and bouncing happily over to me, tail wagging.

"Hey boy, what are you doing out here all by yourself?"

It continues its happy trot over to me, and sits at my feet, nose twitching constantly at the obvious and appetizing smell of two hundred year old steak. My own stomach twitches slightly as well.

Surprisingly good manners for a wild dog, I catch myself checking for a collar, but why would there be a collar? Like wasteland's got some kind of animal registration board?

"You seem like an okay guy."

I rip a piece of steak off and set it flat on my palm, letting the big fella take a sniff and decide what he wants to do. I've seen feral dogs before, and they wouldn't be wagging their tails like this. With a surprising dexterity, the dog takes the scrap from my palm and scarfs it down.

"Okay then, let's stick together. What do you say?"

The dog sneezes, and looks me up and down. Tentatively I offer my hand, and he gives it another sniff, and then he proceeds to lick all that terrifying Salisbury juice off my palm.

Cool!

I've made my first friend in the irradiated, and probably Chinese, post-apocalypse!

Dog tenses up, and I can feel his growl reverberate in my chest, prompting me to draw my hand carefully away, and bring it to the gun at my thigh.

"Eeaaasy, boy, eeaaasy."

Pleasedontbitemepleasedontbitemepleasedontbiteme-

Except Dog isn't looking at me, he's looking around, at the ground, and he's backing away too.

Then _I_ hear it. Scrabbling beneath the ground, from all around me. I can't place it, three sources, maybe four?

And then the fucking ground explodes into giant mutated naked molerats.

So, you know, neat.

Dog pounces on the one closest to him, crushing it beneath his bulk and sinking his jaws into it's throat. My gun won't pull out of my makeshift holster, which tells me that not only do I not remember my training from those 'end of days' camps very well, but I also can't improvise a holster.

Two rats jump for me, I manage to kick the first one away but the second chomps on my arm, and christ on sale does it hurt. I can feel my bones bend against its bite, and that tiny piece of me in the back of my mind that stays lucid in times like these notes, quite correctly, exactly how screwed I would be if I broke an arm right now.

The rat manages to knock me on my ass, but thankfully the time it spends scrabbling at me to do so gives me a moment to fumble my gun out of the holster. I put the barrel to it's side and try to vaguely aim for something important, I pull the trigger three times and am rewarded with blood splashing all over my hand and it letting go of my arm.

Dog has killed two, and is well on his way to number three, while the one I kicked in the head is regaining its wits.

And then time slows down to a crawl.

I'm standing awkwardly in an open air gun range in the Catskills somewhere. Hubby drove, and I fell asleep. My feet are awkward, the gun feels heavy and awkward in my hand, and I love him with all my heart but Nate came back from Alaska a little different than he left and this is one of those things.

He comes from behind me, gently kicking my heels until I've got something vaguely correct going on. He's muttering about police standard positions and mozambique of all things, I'm definitely not following. It's not until he puts his arms around mine and raises the gun for me that I really put everything together.

"Be firm, and consistent. It's a tool, like a hammer or a wrench or a pen, it does only what you tell it to do, so command it like anything else. Line the blade with the notch, keep it firm and steady, then put the pumpkin on the post, and squeeze the trigger."

Of course I'm sitting on the ground now, and I only have one hand on the gun, the other is clutched to my chest and bleeding slightly, still, the principle is the same. The gun barks three more times, and Bitey McBiteface over there has three holes where his face used to be.

The gun shakes in my hand as I jerk around, looking for the next target. A scraping to my right gets a bullet, and before the ejected casing even hits the ground I put another shot into a suspicious bush on the other side of the Red Rocket's lot.

Movement right in front of me brings the pistol back around, but it's Dog. Dog stands up calmly, and slowly, and he walks right over to me. He lays down, putting his thirty pound head gently on my leg, and he whines a bit.

Okay.

Dog is scared.

As the shaking in my gun hands sorts itself out, I realize that this is a reasonable position for Dog to take. I just shot two molerats, I am currently covered in blood, and most recently I managed to murder a suspicious bush and a traffic cone that fell over during the fight.

Dog licks the hand of my injured arm.

"I was right, you are an okay guy."

His ears perk adorably.

"We're gonna be friends," I shift my arm and grimace, "Right after I use another stimpac."

I have a moment of fear, and looking at Dog carefully I ask a very important question.

"Can you overdose on stimpacs?"

* * *

( **!** ) I love Dogmeat. I hate that Dogmeat is named Dogmeat. You'll catch on to that pretty quick I think. In any case, my interpretation of Dogmeat is based off a piece of fanart I saw on Reddit, created by a very good artist on Deviantart who goes by the name Tench. The art has since been remove from their profile, but I saved it when I saw it and so everyone knows what I'm referring to please go to | imgur dot com slash a slash XdEaD |

For reference, every non-feral dog encountered in this story, like the ones available for purchase and the attack dogs used by raiders, will all be along this same line. I'm choosing to believe that radiation has made all not-sick dogs awesome.

Also for reference, trying to share a link on this site is very difficult, or I am very stupid, but probably a bit of both.


	4. Chapter 4

The Tale of Nora Rigg -/- Chapter Four

* * *

My new friend Dog and I share a hearty meal of food I found in two hundred year old cans. I don't _see_ an expiration date on said cans, so... yeah. I also didn't look very hard for one. Again, sometimes it's better to not know.

Then, Dog and I realize we need a plan.

I think perhaps my old plan will work as a jumping off point, and after a discussion involving plenty of ear scratches, Dog seems to agree.

Dog may be humoring me.

A casual search of the Red Rocket nets me another three stimpacs, a couple of bullets in a desk drawer, and a few bags of Radaway. Also the better part of five hundred dollars, and a minor mystery in the form of a small taped up container labeled 'Caps', containing about thirty Nuka-Cola caps of varying quality. A mystery for another time, perhaps. It also reveals that the Red Rocket has a Workshop.

Now _this_ gives me options.

I never looked up who made these things, and this one doesn't have any kind manufacturer's mark, but whoever it was had a lot of geniuses working for them. It's a single package containing machining capabilities, sophisticated 3D printing, flash furnaces, concrete processing and recycling, and basically everything someone could conceivably need to build and repair a home, or a city for that matter.

I never saw them on the news, but they were all over the Boston area. I think we were some kind of limited run test for these things, see how they work, what they're worth, and how badly they screw with the local economy. I know I never bought a lightbulb after the Jensens across the street got their workshop in.

Nate made sure we could both whip up a generator from a field stripped car, but with one of these things I can just make a generator. About the only thing you can't do with it is make guns or knives. The damn things are hard-locked to never make anything with the form of a weapon or armor. Or drugs, I think. I know it can do chemistry, and I feel like I'd have known that 'Weird Guy Three Doors Down' was a drug dealer a lot sooner if he was able to use the community bench to whip up his product.

At any rate, options.

I slowly realize that I've been standing here staring at the workbench for twenty minutes, and Dog is sitting at my side looking at me like I'm an idiot. To be fair, he isn't necessarily wrong.

"What do you think? This isn't an awful building, we could probably fortify it."

Dog sneezes again and glances outside, then back to me.

"No, you're right. Fucking molerats. They probably have a nest around here or something."

Dog stands, shaking himself out. I get a short bark for my trouble.

Okay, so I still need supplies, and I still need shelter. And I still need water.

"South then? Scar-face had to go somewhere, and there isn't anything north of us."

Bark bark. Okay.

Collecting all my stuff I give Dog a few good scratches, and we leave the station. I immediately go for the road, but as we near it Dog bumps my side. I stop and look down at him, "We talked about this, and we all agreed, south."

With a whine he nips my sleeve and draws me to the southwest, back through the Red Rocket's lot, along the edge of the overhang. I follow him for a few steps before he drops my sleeve and bounces back out front, taking point I suppose.

I gather he knows something I don't. Alrighty then, I suppose he is the local.

I follow him past some derelict payphones and down a hill, and as soon as I hit about forty or so feet from the Red Rocket, my geiger counter goes insane. A quick wave of my arm reveals the rads flowing from a dark hole in the ground.

A radiation cave, neat.

I don't even need Dog's whine to decide to not do that. I'm trying to find my son, the first step of which is not dieing. Avoiding radioactive holes in the ground seems prudent.

We skirt the edges of Concord. There aren't any of the noises I normally associate with it. No nuclear cars backfiring or the church bell ringing. Instead there's a steady trickle of muted gunfire and laser pulses. A scream, from near the town center.

I again decide to not have any part of that. No need to seek combat until I'm ready, ideally prepared with more than three 10mm pistols scavenged from dead things.

We pass a tire fire and keep moving south, as we pass what I _think_ is Highway 2, the undead attack. Four... nuclear zombies... come boiling over a hill surprising Dog and I. I learned my lesson from the last fight and just carry my pistol out. I snap three shots off, two into the chest of one and one into the shoulder of another.

Chest goes down, shoulder spins and reels. Dog jumps in instantly, distracting the remaining two while I struggle to get sights on shoulder guy. I fire four more times, hitting each time but without effect. As I look closer it is not a man... thing? What I took for shorts is actually a romper, and this lady has seen some better days. Shrugging off bullets to her thigh and right arm, she keeps coming.

I finally drill her in the head, while Dog has hamstrung one and is now putting the other on the bit, both are pretending to lunge, probing for a weakness. At least these things don't use guns. It's got an animal intelligence, not unlike Dog, and I use this against it to draw a bead and empty my magazine in it's chest from behind.

The only threat left is Hamstrung Zombie, which has chosen a tactical retreat, pulling itself hand over hand away from Dog and I. I walk over to dog, he's favoring his side in a way that makes me guess he took a solid punch. I scratch his ears gratefully, and follow the trail left by the legless zombie.

It's crossed into a clearing with a cabin, I steady myself, the adrenaline begining to make my hands shake again. I fumble one of the magazines in my pocket, and instead of grabbing it from the floor I just grab my last and load it as deliberately as I can.

Captain undead has decided better of his retreat, and is now struggling back towards me and Dog. I draw a deep breath, and give it a shot to the head.

I do have a bottle of Day Tripper...

I've already had to fight two groups of what-the-fuck monsters today. Who the fuck knows when I'll hit three. Drugs aren't the answer right now. Dog presses his head to my thigh, and when I look down he's got my dropped mag in his mouth.

I go to my knees and take it from him gently, slipping it into my pocket. Then I proceed to cover his head in the good scritches.

"You're such a good boy, yes you are. Good boy."

He wuffles a bit at me, and then turns and scans the area. Yes. There may be more. But there is also a cabin here, just ripe for picking through. Dog and I could probably both use another stimpac tonight before bed.

I check through the window of the cabin before I open the door, and there appears to be another zombie sleeping on a mattress. A likely story, I've fucking seen horror movies. If I'm one round down on my second to last mag, that puts me at... 45-odd bullets left? 50?

Enough To waste a shot to double check. I carefully aim at it's head, and my shot hits at a weird angle and bounces off the skull. The thing starts to get up, still reeling but also still definitely 'alive'.

I pump two more rounds into it and it finally falls. Dog and I enter the room, there's some kind of chemistry set-up at the back, a couch, a few tables, and a mostly full bottle of something that has been labeled Bourbon in what appears to be crayon.

Which raises some questions, but whatever. To the right of the door is a trapdoor going down to what I can only assume is a bomb shelter.

Well. Bomb shelters mean supplies, and supplies means another Salisbury steak for Dog and I. Maybe more emergency stimpacs. I think Dog's with me on this, there's nothing to be gained from a radioactive hole, but with possible supplies on the line, we're going down the scary basement door in the house inhabited by zombies.

The first thing I notice is that there is a lot of light down here, and the sound of a generator rumbling around the dirt enclosed space. It immediately opens up into a large dirt walled main room, there are shelves all around the space, and a workstation with what seems like a shell reloading apparatus. I scrounge some purified water and some Rad-X, picking through a tool box nets me duct tape and toothpaste! I'm a third of the way to brushing my teeth! Then I take a closer look, Tom's of Maine, ugh.

I toss it on the ground.

Hippie toothpaste was just a step up from Commie toothpaste, and like Liberty Prime used to say on all those posters, death was a preferable alternative to communism.

Shaking my head, I go deeper into the cave/cellar thing. The wall are still dirt, and the floor is graced with the occasional sheet of plywood to cover the rough dirt path. My geiger counter starts sounding off, a rad or so a second, and at the end of the cave a concrete and steel doorway emblazoned with a 'Restricted Area - Keep Out' sign. I poke the door open, leading with my gun, and immediately put three shots into the back of the zombie I find in the room.

The zombie was crouched over a workbench, and the work bench has a fucking disassembled mini-nuke on it.

No wonder this guy is a fucking future murder zombie, he's been fucking around with a mini-nuke for god only know how long. I ignore the ticking of my rad counter and go to the man's desk, there, bound in what seems to be recycled newspaper, is a hand drawn magazine entitled 'Wasteland Survival Guide'. I grab that and shove between the strap of my improvised holster and my thigh. His computer's password takes ten seconds to crack, and it contains a manifesto detailing how the government is mind-controlling people through the use of electrical towers.

Right.

If the government was mind controlling people they wouldn't have been paying me every month to put murderers behind bars.

I pat the magazine at my thigh, definitely something to read later. If people are publishing a survival guide, then people are surviving, and have the free time and food to publish something. A conclusion that bears some thought.

Before I catch crazy, and zombie for that matter, I head back out of the cellar and the cabin. The sun is starting to set. On the one hand I don't want to know what comes out at night, but on the other I want to put more space between me and Sanctuary. Dog doesn't seem to have an opinion, though from what I've seen today he may have fleas. A flea collar may lie in his near future if I can find one.

Do flea collars expire?

He may have to settle for a bath, provided we can find the water.

In the distance someone has started a campfire, to the south and east a smidge. Dog and I sneak as best we can in that direction. There are some rocks near the fire, a bit steep, but not covered in sticks that might reveal us. There isn't anyone at the fire, just a few bottles and a tool box. It's not worth the potential danger as a trap, so we move south again.

We cross another road, and find ourselves near the Drumlin Diner. I've eaten here a few times when I was coming home really late. There appear to be lanterns or something lit in the building, but as I get near I hear raised voices.

I get closer, and I make the mistake of spending more time looking at the shouting than I do my feet, a stick finally cracks beneath me and two figures shouting at the diner immediately turn and draw guns.

"Stay out of here Vault Girl, this doesn't involve you!"

My gun is still out in my hand, and it's definitely pointed towards them now. Fucking hell, first actual people I see on this fucking blasted wasteland, and they're both pointing guns at me.

More to myself than anything I say, "I'm calling it right here. This world can officially bite my ass."

"Hey we all got problems, all right? I'm just here trying to collect on what's owed to me. Don't suppose you feel like helping us out? Could use an extra gun, or maybe you talk some sense into Trudy over there?"

So now the shitty Mad Max impersonator has a gun on me and is offering me a job. Great. On the loose assumption that someone in the building is named Trudy, I try, "I'll talk to her, maybe we can work this out."

He puts his gun away with, "Appreciate it, If things go sideways we'll back you up."

I keep my gun drawn and make my way into the diner, which has turned into a serious shit-hole since the last time I was in. All the windows are gone, there's an actual skeleton in one of the booths, and there's a tough looking old lady, and a druggie in what looks like a baseball outfit shaking in the back.

The lady leads with, "I saw you and that poison-seller talking. Well, he ain't getting his money. Period."

"Why, whats this all about?", Dog shifts around my feet, smelling at the counter behind us.

"Oh, that chem-pusher didn't tell you? He got my boy hooked on Jet, sold him a ton of junk on 'credit' and now expects me to pay him off."

I worked with the Boston PD mostly on homicide cases, but I knew guys in vice. It's a comfort somehow to know that dealers are just as much scum now as ever. This isn't even the first I've heard of this same scheme.

"That bastard ain't getting a single damn cap from me."

"I want to help you Trudy. What do I do?"

"Get rid of Wolfgang!"

His name is Wolfgang?

"I don't know what he offered you, but I'll pay you 100 caps to kill that Jet-selling scumbag."

I don't understand most of the words she used, but I get the drift. I nod my head, and step back, considering my options. I've found a few crappy improvised pipe guns, but my 10mm is my best bet. I discretely check my ammo and go back out to 'Wolfgang'.

As I walk up, he tells me, "You take care of Trudy and I'll make it worth your while."

I nod. My hand is shaking again. I'm sure I'm sweating.

I'm about to kill the first human being I've seen since the apocalypse, in order to help the mom of a druggie, and for the promise of 'Caps'. I've never shot at a person before. I still have molerat blood all over my sleeves.

I go to rub my forehead with my gun hand, and suddenly the molerat is all I can smell.

As I lower my hand it's pointed at the woman who identified herself as muscle. I squeeze twice, and with the muzzle so close to my head it's thunder inside my head, utterly deafening. I catch her one in the temple, dropping her immediately.

Wolfgang has his own shitty pipe gun up and at me instantly, he fires and I can feel the shot hit my shoulder and scrape my bone before it exits out the back. Dog bites a shin, pulling him down, and I immediately try to transfer the gun from my injured hand. He scrabbles in the dirt with Dog, I watch as he pistol whips Dog's head repeatedly, but Dog isn't giving an inch. I get the gun switched before he can get his gun actually pointed towards Dog, and I fire twice into his chest, and once into his head when he stops moving.

I'm on my third or fourth wind now. Jesus. Dog gets to his feet, he looks as shaky as I feel. I stumble into the diner, and throw myself onto one of the stools in front of the counter.

"Ha! Can't wait to see the crows feeding on that scumbag. Here, this is for you. Now, you ever need to trade, my shop's open!"

I have to revise my internal 'tough old woman' to 'sociopathic old woman'. I've seen four humans now. I killed two, one is a druggie and has yet to speak, and the remaining one is going to leave two dead human bodies outside to rot in order to watch crows eat them.

I press a hand to my bullet wound, and hold it up to see how bad the bleeding is. The verdict is 'not bad', it was a flesh wound, "Will you be alright Trudy?"

"Yeah. It's gonna take my son a while to get off the chems, but we'll make it. We always do."

She seems weary. I can't help but wonder if this isn't the first time her son's dealer has come by looking for money owed.

"Now, let's get back to business. You need anything for the road?"

Ah, I am not welcome to stay.

"I'm good for now, thanks."

I inject two stimpacs into my arm, and cringe my way through twenty minutes as the skin knits over the shot. Dog puts a lot of weight on me as he deals with what is likely to be a light concussion of his own. Eventually we're both steady enough to go.

I stop in front of the two bodies out front.

I just killed the two of them. A very good lawyer may have been able to get me a deal, I could argue shades of self-defense, given how they pointed guns at me as I walked up. Still, I'd probably be looking down the barrel of life, with the possibility of parole sometime in my late fifties.

The woman, whoever she was, has a pretty nice metal plate cover on her right arm. It looks like it could take a bullet or two. I decide that in the absence of otherwise lawful authority, it is mine now. Her sawed off shotgun also looks pretty nice, I take it, all her ammo, and her box of Blamco Mac'n Cheese.

No point in letting it go if it's just gonna get picked over by crows. Or more than likely added to the inventory of Trudy's shop here.

I can see the screen of the drive-in from where I stand, and honestly, it seems like a nicer place to spend the night than any I've seen so far. I'm exhausted, but I crouch down and move my way over as quietly as I can.

I enter the lot from a hole in the chain link fence, and make my way to the only door visible on this side. Someone has boarded up all the windows, so it looks mostly secure, and when I try the door it proves to actually be mostly secure. I'm too wiped to sit here for half an hour and try picking the lock. I follow a path marked by paving stones around the big screen, and come across an unlocked door next to a cooking spit someone has installed.

Inside there is a grill, a bottle of vodka, some preserved food in a run down fridge, a couch, and a baby's crib.

I let Dog in, and close the door behind me, sinking to the ground with my back holding it shut.

I almost reach out to touch the crib, but I'm already crying.

Shaun.

My Nate, and my Shaun.

And that fucking Scar-face that took them from me.

I should pull the crib in front of the door to block it, but I can't bring myself to touch it still. I pull myself across the room and onto the musty couch. I prop the unknown woman's shotgun, loaded, across my lap and pointed to the door.

With my spare hand I beckon Dog onto the couch next to me, then I lean my head on his massive shoulder and cry myself to sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

The Tale of Nora Rigg -/- Chapter Five

* * *

The day dawned bright, and early. To my exhausted mind's credit, the room I ended up sleeping in had only one boarded up window, so when I finally woke next to Dog's gently snoring mass, a quick check of my Pip-Boy informs me it's well after eleven am.

Rubbing the sleep from my eyes I crack the door and take a look at the horizon.

The Corvega plant is still mostly intact. Lexington looks more or less intact as well. One of the skybridges going into the city has fallen.

I always thought the sky bridges seemed like a fantastically bad idea, even during the food riots.

I want to feel vindicated, but in the end no one won that argument.

Instead of allowing myself to feel incredibly depressed, I will choose to instead scavenge around the Drive-In. I used to watch newsreels here from time to time when Nate was away.

Maybe it would be okay.

That locked door from last night ought to be a good place to start, then maybe up to the crow's nest area on top of the screen?

Part of Nate's doomsday classes, they showed us all how to pick most common locks. Back then we had neat little tools, but as our instructor was quick to point out, a bobby pin should do. The ones I have stuck to my collar from two hundred years ago should suffice.

It's all about the light touch, and after breaking one of my supply of three, I get there.

Inside I find a bag of Radaway, a couple more bobby pins, and a bottle of Nuka Cola Quantum, amongst other bits and bobs. Also a bog standard fusion core, which will be great if I find any intact cars, commercial generators, or suits of power armor. Because I'm sure all of those are likely.

I leave the formerly locked room, and walk back around to the front of the drive-in screen. The bombs hit during the day, did people use the drive-in lot as a parking lot during the day? Overflow from the supermarket?

In either case I'm looking at about twenty rusting hulks in the lot. That's a lot of spare parts for something. Maybe I can get a car running? From the state of the roads that I've seen, that probably wouldn't be useful, but something to keep in mind I suppose.

The bubbling pool in the middle of the lot is also somewhat encouraging. It _could_ be a natural spring, or it could be a slow bubble from the barrels of radioactive waste heating the water. Though it probably would have boiled off by now if it were just a puddle. Bit of both?

The door leading to the top of the screen is open, so I just waltz in, it's three flights of stairs to the top, in a very narrow slot between the support wall and the screen itself. Good for my waistline if nothing else. I make it nine steps up when I begin hearing an angry and insistent beeping, and as my eye line clears the floor line of the first landing I make out the words 'FRAGMENTATION MINE' and two flashing yellow LEDs.

OHSHI-

I throw myself backward down the stairs, as soon as I move the mine blows and a pressure wave throws me even harder to the ground at the base of the stairs. My head is swimming, and I think I've dislocated my shoulder.

I forgot, it is not safe here.

A twist, and I learn that my shoulder is not dislocated. A clank, and I learn that debris from the mine is still falling.

For his part, Dog appears at the door to the stairwell, and snuffles at my head before giving me a slobbery upside down dog kiss.

"Its okay buddy, I'm okay."

I pull myself up to a sitting position, my back against the door. Okay. I think the upstairs can wait for a bit.

It's going to be that kind of day.

Christ, two hundred years ago I would have called in sick.

Collecting myself, I head out into the lot, angling for the out building across the way. Maybe someone had some more shotgun shells in there, or another med kit. Dog and I could use the stimpacs. I get a muscle spasm from my shoulder, and reflect that really maybe it's just me that could use the stimpac.

It takes me about ten yards to notice a familiar scrabbling beneath the ground.

Oh hell no, those ball-sack looking things weren't catching me by surprise again, I just woke up and dealt with a mine, I don't need this heat. I jump on top of the first car in the lot, some sports car looking model I'm not familiar with, and ready the sawed-off I took off unknown dead woman number one.

The first and second rat each get a barrel of the good stuff, their bodies plug the holes they were each climbing out of. Rather than reload I heft my 10mm and wait for the next challenger.

One pops out behind Dog, and before he can react I hit its hindquarters. Dog falls on it like an avalanche and while he's busy finishing it off I put three rounds in Rats number four and five.

Number six tries to sneak up on me, but I catch the sound of claws on asphalt and spin to catch it. My first shot goes wild, kicking up shards to its left, and my second does the same. It jumps for me on the car but I meet it halfway with the butt of my pistol, stunning it long enough for me to nail it with the last few rounds in the magazine.

I feel very, very awake now.

Dog, freshly covered in mole-rat vital fluid, seems to agree. He's bouncing happily back over to me, and when he gets to the car he sits and gives me a bark.

With a gimlet eye, I spear Dog with a look, "You're a morning person, aren't you."

Bark bark indeed.

With a huff I lift myself back up and make my way to the outbuilding. I have the lock cracked in a trice, and when the door opens, I catch a glorious sight.

A Workbench.

This is good, I can work with this.

Before I get too excited I need to figure out everything I've got though. The cars are fantastic. Even if all the parts are rusted and broken to hell and back, it should still give me the basis to form some actual machinery. I could get a generator, and probably a water purifier running pretty easily. A lot of raw materials if nothing else.

There could be more mole rats here just like at the Red Rocket, but all those car parts still make this a more attractive spot.

I continue over to the main building, the overhang on the north side has fallen, and it looks like I could use it as a ramp to get onto the roof. The door into the building on the north side has been boarded over.

The structure rose about three stories above the level of the parking lot, sort of angled like the tower of a submarine. A one story section jutted out into the lot, and two hundred years ago there was a nice cafe here. They opened sometimes in the early afternoons. I'd had a coffee here a few times in the afternoon, just to get out of the house.

I trace around the cafe section, collecting dust and filth on a fingertip as I try to not recall what's been lost. Dog's presence at my hip helps.

Looks like someone left a lunchbox on the counter? They put some lights on it, and covered it in duct tape, but that is unmistakably a vault-tec lunchbox.

I get within ten paces of it, and it begins a familiar angry beeping. Dog and I both take a few quick steps back, angry beeping is not a good sign, and the lunch box explodes in front of us.

The boom itself isn't deafening, but shrapnel covers the area all around us. My arms, instinctively raised in front of my face, are a bloody mess, and Dog isn't looking much better. A glance tells me he has a new ear piercing and something lodged above his shoulder blade, reflected off the roof and down into him. Some fuck packed the thing with bottle caps!

I look at my arms, and I've fucking got one lodged in me too!

The metal arm guard I took off unknown dead woman number one yesterday deflected a few shots, based on the shiny new scratches-

Holy fuck I killed someone yesterday.

I shake myself out of the daze, I have to remember Rule Number One: I am useless to Shaun if I am dead.

I can barely move my hands, but I inject a few of my precious remaining stimpacs, and I spare one for Dog as well. Carefully, I take one of my last sealed cans of purified water, and clean the cuts.

Tonight I have to break out one of the pristine packaged vault suits. This one is covered in blood and has a truly unhappy number of holes in it. Jesus.

The better part of a painful hour later, Dog and I are back on our feet.

Rule Number Two: The wasteland is not safe. No exceptions, never fucking forget it.

I get excited by a workbench and nearly lose my damn arms on the second mine of the day.

By now it's nearly two-thirty, and there's a light drizzle. Classic Boston weather, but at least it cleans the blood from the pavement around the cafe. I head under the overhang to get out of the wet, and decide to take a good look at everything before I get any farther. Someone felt this place was valuable enough merit an improvised explosives, it's very not-crazy to think that if whoever put it here thought it was worth one, they may believe it's worth two.

My paranoia hits immediate pay dirt.

The glass in the door is busted, so I stick my head inside to take a look. On the top of the door frame someone has placed some kind of tension spring connected to a small radio receiver, and at thigh level they've placed what looks strongly like a cigar box filled with explosives.

Jesus H. Christ.

Nate used to drink with one of the guys in a unit he deployed with that worked explosives ordnance disposal. I remember asking him, and having him ask in turn, why the good guys in all the flicks never just pulled the detonators from all of that cheap shitty Chinese plastic explosive.

Apparently it was trivial to rig up fail safes, and fail safes to your fail safes. In Alaska they used to rig temperature change fuses. You'd disarm the bomb in the field, and take the 'safe' material back to base for disposal or repurposing (a risky god damn business on its own), then when the bomb entered your sealed tent and warmed up a few degrees from completely frozen, boom.

I know enough to know I shouldn't touch any of this. Hell, it could have a motion sensor like the lunchbox.

I can't just leave it, but I sure as hell don't want to touch it.

Six feet from the door is a Nuka-Cola machine. A nice, heavy, solid, and very 'made-of-steel' Nuka-Cola machine.

I have a bad idea.

Hiding behind it, I can just draw a bead on the cigar box of doom. I shield myself as best I can, for lack of a better idea I stick a finger in my ear, and taking advice from Nate, I make sure to unclench my jaw, then I aim and squeeze off a round.

No effect.

Now I'm left huddling behind a vending machine, realizing what a stupid plan this was.

What if it doesn't go off when struck? Is it on a slow burn now? How long have those explosives been sitting there anyway?

I risk a peek, and am comforted by the bullet hole on the side of the building. It's just that I'm a bad shot, whew.

Assuming the position, I aim a little more carefully, and try again.

My efforts are immediately rewarded by a thundering explosion, and the door blasting open on its hinges, slapping the wall and rebounding.

That sturdy pre-war construction. Go America.

I carefully enter, and begin poking around. A staircase leads to the top of the overhang, and then to the projection room, where I am greeted by yet another friendly Mr. Skeleton.

Gross.

God I hate skeletons, I've seen more in the last two days than in the better part of a decade in criminal justice.

For my trouble I receive another 10mm pistol, two bullets, a disturbing pompadour wig, and for some reason a tool box containing duct tape, a scalpel, and another tube of fucking Tom's of Maine.

God help me, I will never escape hippie-commie toothpaste.


	6. Chapter 6

The Tale of Nora Rigg -/- Chapter Six

* * *

So.

On day two of scavenging about the area, and I have a pile of scrap as big as a van, a significant fraction of which is composed of van, alongside a somewhat empty lot in which to play. I spent my time picking and choosing what to pull apart, I figure it's probably better to catalog and not touch for now.

I have to think long term. Using all the choice pieces of salvage immediately isn't a good plan.

My first instinct for shelter is to secure the already existing building, but half an hour of attempts prove to me that's a fool's errand.

The workshop's construction is based off standard templates, I just can't customize things, I can only use my recycled materials in the existing forms that the bench outputs, and the existing forms don't lend themselves well to securing the open cafe area of the Drive-In.

All of the walls I can build are limited by the size of bars the bench forges, and all of the concrete I can salvage is penned in by the ultrasonic drying forms. I can go from pour to a fully functional foundation in an hour, but I can't exactly block a doorway with it.

I need to build my own place then, ideally in such a way that mutated mole rats can't just pop into my floor.

I've got enough of that recycled concrete material to make a small foundation, but not enough to make a full set of concrete walls. I've got the metal scrap to make mostly secure walls, and a decent sized generator. If I stretch my supplies I can make a water purifier for the bubbling pool in the middle of the lot.

It took a hectic hour yesterday, and all of my Rad-X, but the radioactive barrels from the pool are gone, and I now have enough fuel to keep a generator running for the foreseeable future.

The real problem is the fact that the Lexington area, I assume just like everywhere else, is a lawless hellhole. I can build whatever I want, but in the end if I can't defend it I'm screwed. I've been at the drive in for two days and I've already had to fend off another group of molerats. I can hear gunfire from Lexington proper all the time, my best guess is some kind of gang is running out of the Corvega plant, probably the reason why it still looks mostly intact from the outside.

I sigh, causing Dog to look over at me from where he's sprawled in front of the cafe. The seats here are old and decidedly rotten, but I need somewhere to try and plan what I'm doing.

Rule One: I am useless to Shaun if I'm dead.

Charging blindly into Boston isn't going to get me anywhere. Having a secure place to sleep, and store any kind of weapons or supplies I find, that will actually contribute to something. There wasn't any sign of Scar-face in the vault, I have no idea how long I was back under after he stole my son.

So.

I'll put together a concrete foundation, to keep the molerats out and the save myself from undead Chinese infiltrators tunneling under walls like in the movies I used to watch here. Then I have the scrap and recycled car paneling to make four somewhat patchy walls.

The workbench at the Drive-in must have gotten some kind of post-war firmware update, it's got plans for a powered hydraulic door that definitely weren't a part of their initial release, but I can use them to make a more secure entrance.

I'll have to take apart all of the street lights around the lot, and I'll have to scrap the two phones out back of the building, but between all of those fuses and vacuum tubes I have the raw materials to set up a switch system that'll keep the door consistently closed and secure.

The whole thing is a risk, the purifier gurgling away in the middle of the lot will definitely attract attention, but in the end I need to drink, Dog needs a bath, and we both need a secure place to sleep.

As if he were telepathic, Dog gets to his feet and wanders over next to me. He puts his cannon ball sized head on my leg and looks up at me with soulful eyes.

"Yes you can have the rest of the canned dog food."

He wuffles happily.

"Stupid cute mutt."

I've got a plan now.

Over the last two days, I read the magazine I picked up at the zombie cabin, and the instructions in it were pretty clear.

I need to get to Diamond City.

If you can believe it, Fenway is now the center for civilization in the region. I'm incredibly disappointed that the radio station that seems to be based out of there isn't still playing 'Sweet Caroline', but what can you do? It took me the better part of a day to realize that the radio wasn't some kind of old recording still broadcasting, initially I just wrote it off because the music it was playing was what I remember from four days ago. It only hit me when I was taking a break and paying attention to it that the weirdo they have on as DJ was talking about the wasteland.

I was never really into baseball, but I can't help but hope that Yankee Stadium got hit. Just to get some kind of irradiated silver lining out of the end of days.

I spend all of my second day at the Drive-In putting a building together. We always thought it'd be pretty easy to make a building when the Jensens got their workshop. No one really had a need, but we all figured that it'd be straightforward.

We were right.

By the time the sun started to go down I had a full building made up, with a generator keeping a hydraulic door closed and a power line running to a purifier.

That night I collected some Abraxo from the supply closet behind the projection screen, diluted it a bit, and gave Dog the scrubbing he so desperately needed. For a stray, he was surprisingly receptive, but given the fact that he lost five pounds worth of dirt and general filth, maybe he was as pleased with the outcome as I was.

I give myself a once over as well. I've been in the same jumpsuit for days now. I take this opportunity to slip into one of the new Vault 111 suits.

Tonight, I sleep on a somewhat new mattress, recycled from a few old outfits, some newspaper, and with the hell washed out of it by the workbench fiber reprocessing and the second box of Abraxo I found.

Tomorrow, I make my first steps into the wasteland.

* * *

[A/N]: Apologies for the wait and the boring chapter. The holidays and a sinus infection had me down, and the establishment of a base of operations for Nora had to take place at some point. I'll be back to the normal Saturday update schedule again.


	7. Chapter 7

The Tale of Nora Rigg -/- Chapter Seven

* * *

Waking up, my stomach rumbles, and I figure out my first priority in this brave new world.

Post-apocalyptic new world?

I've only been out here for five or so days now, and post-apocalyptic is already feeling kind of dry as a phrase.

For that matter brave new world is also inappropriate.

Huxley wouldn't have recognized this place.

Whatever. I need food. On that topic, Dog wakes up, shakes himself, scratches his side, and the deep rumble from his stomach strongly leads me to believe he's with me on my priority list.

"You ate all of the dog food yesterday."

His ears perk.

Rummaging through my supplies I find a few packages of Blamco, some Dandy Boy apples, a few cans of Pork and Beans, and a single lonely bag of Salisbury steak.

There's a lot of Cram here too, but I'm not that desperate yet.

Have you ever seen the ingredient label on a can of Cram?

At first pass you think, 'Oh, thirty percent of my daily sodium, well for one meal that's not bad, I'm only eating three meals, that might be appropriate!'

No.

That's per serving, and those clever devils at the meat packing plant have filled that little can with eight servings.

If I wanted to live my life as some kind of fucking desiccated salt filled mummy I would have stayed in my fucking cryo tube.

I line all of the food up on the desk I made for my new primitive home, and take a step back.

"What do you think?"

Dog noses around the lot, and when he hit the end of the line he looks back at me with... discontent?

"Not fresh enough for you?"

I step back to the desk and crack the box of steak. Among the plans in the workshop was a delightful little dog bowl, and having made one, I empty the foil pouch into the thing.

Dog scarfs his food and I decide to go for a bag of mac and cheese. We both drink about a liter of water and it's time to go.

I've filled all my magazines from the ammo boxes I've found. As Dog and I leave the safety of my home, I chamber a round and flick the safety off.

Rule Two: Nowhere is safe.

I'll try to be quiet and thorough. Like they used to say in the movies, slow is smooth, smooth is fast. For an instant I am consumed by the irony that six days ago I was actively pursuing legal cases against two different men and one woman who had attacked Super Duper Marts for food.

As I leave the Drive-In lot and cross a road and some railroad tracks, I'm stuck wondering what happened. The end of America, obviously, but my interest is more specific. A flat bed train car is lying away from the tracks, just off the side of the road, and entangled with it are a few cars.

Did the train derail into the cars? What happened first?

Lying across the tracks is a rusted out hulk of a pick-up. Based on how it's laying and facing there's almost no way it was blow there by the blast I saw. Did someone crash it later?

As I circle west around the Super Duper's parking lot I see more cars, a shitty Department of Public Services barrier at the stoplight there.

I don't remember that stoplight being closed up before the bombs fell.

Are engine coolant prices really low or really high now? The Red Rocket's old sign says a buck fifteen, but given that all cars are wrecks and all the coolant in the world has definitely expired by now, it's got to be worth a lot more.

The city is eerie.

It never occurred to me that the SD's faced the town square, but now I face the open space with a conspicuous lack of noise. The occasional caw from some pretty damn fierce looking ravens is the only sound.

As I round the corner fully to the door my foot brushes an empty canister of Mr. Handy fuel, the can making a sharp clack.

I would swear it was fucking witchcraft if I hadn't seen it myself, but three zombies seem to pop out of the ground across the square and run straight for me, their ragged breathing and flapping feet filling the silence.

I barely get my gun up and pointed at the charging group when a whistle overrides their sounds and A FUCKING MININUKE GOES OFF IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WHAT THE FUCK!

I press myself against the door and freeze.

No noise.

No clattering cans of Mr. Handy juice.

Some asshat has a fucking Fatman.

From the other side of the square I hear a ragged voice yell, "FUCK YEAH! WOO!"

My eyes are the only part of me moving, it sounds like it's coming from the left, the voice almost echoing in my ears after the outrageous blast of a fucking micro-fusion device going off a hundred feet from me.

There!

A huge dude in what looks like power armor is on the overhead billboard, right next to the dancing donut from Slocum's Joe.

I watch as he visibly high-fives a significantly smaller guy next to him, and the smaller guy clutches his hand in pain.

Nick's sergeant broke his hand doing something a lot like that at the Anchorage liberation party.

Okay.

There's more people out here, and they have the heaviest of ordinance.

Dog whines and presses into my side, his movement choking me out of my own hesitation. I need to get the fuck out of here, and I need to find a back exit to this building because I'm wearing bright fucking blue and it's an honest-to-god miracle that the guy with the Fatman hasn't seen me.

I slowly move over to the door, crack it, and allow Dog in before I follow. It's technically possible those guys are friendly, but I've met exactly four people in the wasteland of the future, and I had to kill two of them.

I'm not taking a nuclear risk on my first day out.

As I enter the market, the first thing I see is two zombies and a charging Protectron.

I honestly would have expected the Protectron to have been fighting end-of-the-world looting, not stuck in its case. I remember when the market first got it, placards with 'For your increased safety' all over the place.

Hell of a security guard, stuck in its fucking box.

I head to the right, the chilled food displays were over here, it's not impossible that there's still a Nuka-Cola or something left. Instead of food I'm confronted with five more dead zombies. I stay away from the bodies and make my way to the display.

A Nuka-Cola Cherry!

I have no idea how they did it, but the factory made Cherry was always better than a Nuka-cola with grenadine. I go to grab it and a shopping cart falls at the back of the store.

I whip around, my gun already in my hand, and a fucking zombie has stood up in the back, dislodging the shopping cart and causing the noise. I blindside it immediately with a shot to the chest and it goes down.

Then the moaning starts.

Two more stumble at me from the back, one gets caught on another shopping cart and falls over itself, but its friend runs at me dodging around the debris on the ground.

I put two into its chest, buts it's not stopping. Out of desperation I shoot its knee and it falls and smacks its head directly on the edge of the cold display, visibly cracking its skull open.

Fuck, that's gross.

The first one has somehow managed to get a leg stuck in the child carrier portion of the cart, I sprint to it before it can clank around even more and I finish it with a shot to the head.

The smell of cordite hangs in the air of the suddenly quiet building.

Hopefully there aren't more.

Hopefully the radioactive fuck heads outside didn't hear.

I need a silencer for my gun very, very quickly. Definitely a priority project when I get back to the Drive-In.

As quietly as I can, I make my way back down the aisle and head for the manager's office. I should have fucking thought of it first, but if that Protectron is still in its cradle and the manager's computer has power, I can probably get it active.

Either it'll sweep the building clear of zombies, or it'll attract them all and I can help it finish them off, either way I'm ahead of skulking through a grocery store with my super-dog.

For his part Dog is just sticking to my side like glue, I get the sense he doesn't like it here anymore than I do, but I know he'll approve of the four more boxes of Salisbury steak I've found.

The manager's door is open, and it takes me a few tries but the guy must have been thinking of leaving Boston because the password to his computer is 'move'. I go through the system to the Protectron controls, and I have to have a laugh at the warnings.

'This interface should be used by RobCo-licensed technicians only. Improper tampering with Protectrons units may lead to permanent injury.'

I should be so lucky.

With a few keystrokes I switch it over to the police standard personality, and I set it loose. As an afterthought, I use the computer to unlock the store's safe. A few hundred extra dollars won't hurt my efforts to survive, and I think Super Duper Mart will eventually forgive me.

The horrible tinny robot voice calls out, "Powering up. Protectron on duty."

It seems very loud in the emptiness of the store.

After I clean the safe out (more bullets than bills, makes me wonder about the manager yet again) I keep to the shadows as much as I can, but I follow the Protectron. Hopefully soon I'll be able to shop in peace.

We go out to the back of the store, and it clearly tries to make its rounds. The poor thing's efforts are definitely affected by the fact that the roof of the entire center of the store has fallen in. I can see the indecision in its joints as it figures out its blocked path. I follow it around, until it hits the cafe and turns around.

The thing is loud as hell, anything that would have been here would have heard it.

I head into the cafe to scrounge, and immediately learn I am wrong.

Three more zombies come out of the woodwork, and with Steely McNoBrains already at the back of the store I'm on my own. I dash into the payphone booth at the end of the row, and I try to hide.

It occurs to me that even before the end of the world this wouldn't have been a good place to take cover, glass walls and all that, so now when everything is broken and I'm trying to hide myself and a hundred and fifty pound dog behind the single derelict cigarette machine somewhat blocking the window space, I may have made a mistake.

Two of them immediately spot me before they can get distracted by the noise of the robot.

Shit.

Dog pounces on one immediately, and I take shots at the other.

"Identify!" gets shouted from the back of the store as Dog just goes nuts on the zombie at his feet. I put a round into its head just to get him to stop.

We're both blinded for a second by the glare from the Protectron's lasers as it makes short work of the only zombie to get distracted by it.

"Attention citizens! You may return to your lawful activities, the threat is over."

Thanks chief.

The cafe nets me another five hundred bucks, and some more medical supplies. I tuck it all into the various pockets on the jumpsuit and move one. No time to count my loot, I can do that when I somewhat safe behind walls and a steel door at the Drive-In.

I head back into the store, where Mr. Robot got his first kill in probably two hundred years. I hadn't considered it when I decided to come here, but there is a wonderful little pharmacy in this place and I bet it has enough anti-rad medication and stimpacs to keep Dog and I in the lap of luxury for a few days at least, especially with the way we take hits these days.

I go out of my way to give Dog a good ear scratch, and we ignore the 'Employees Only' sign together, entering the pharmacy.

This first thing I notice? A new and interesting dead body. Why interesting you ask? Well this fella seems to actually have all his skin, and on top of that he's got microfusion cells all around him, alongside an improvised laser rifle, which is an interesting choice.

Let's play around with directed energy weapons, what could go wrong?

Yikes.

A quick look at the guy's arms shows exactly what I would have expected, rags covering his forearms, themselves covered in carbon scoring. Beneath the rags? Laser thin scars all over his forearms.

I wouldn't have needed Nate's stories to tell you how bad an idea screwing around with lasers is.

I step around the counter intent on the Super Duper Mart pharmacy back room, hopefully a bit of the good stuff.

Another zombie starts to get up from beneath the ruined door to the back room, and another rolls in from outside through the ground level window. Thankfully I'm somewhat expecting this.

They're not catching me by surprise again in this place.

I have two shells in the one by the back before the roller from the window can stand up. When it does, it meets two more with its forehead.

And that back room? It's a bathroom. Excellent.

Someone has a 7.62 mm ammo box filled loosely with 10 mm shells and more fusion cells in there, so not a total loss. I also nick a stimpac from the medical kit on the wall.

I head over to the back of the store, I've picked up a lot of supplies as I've covered the main room of the place, but I can't forget the power armored maniac with the Fatman out front. I need a backward facing exit, and that's only through the stockroom and receiving area in the back. If I'm lucky I'll be able to find more supplies there.

Dog and I get close to the double doors leading to the back and the dulcet tone of the Protectron ring out, "Hostile identified."

The robotic voice followed shortly by laser discharges.

Dog and I look to each other, and decide that it can probably fend for itself. Hopefully it's drawing everything to itself, and freeing us to search the rest of the building.

Nope!

I take two steps into the back room and I take a hit directly to the side of my face. Another zombie was waiting for me to the right of the door, away from the hallways.

I'm staggered, and I have trouble seeing for a second as I deal with the sucker punch. I hear Dog growl, and I blindly aim for the moaning I hear in response. I start firing and by the third shot I've blinked my way back to visibility. The first one is down, but two more come boiling out of the doors in the rear of the room. I nail the first one but the second one gets too close.

I manage to duck a swipe and instead throw myself straight into a kick from it. It scores a hit on my raised forearms, hurts like a bitch, but I get the last laugh, three shots point blank up into its chest. With a shove, the body falls back and away, and I'm left with a much larger cousin sprinting for me again from the rear of the store.

How many of these assholes are there!?

I fire twice into it, blunting its charge, and my gun runs dry. Dog jumps on it like champ, distracting it while I reload. It goes down to two more shots in the back.

Dog gets back over to me, crouched and ready by my side, while I keep my gun pointed at the doors for more stragglers.

Nothing.

It's quiet again.

I move through the larger double doors, heading back to what I can only guess is the primary supply room. I make it three paces before I'm assaulted by the smell of kerosene.

Someone's spread the better part of a fueling tank all over the ground, and I think I can make out the tank itself from where I'm standing just down the hall. I've gotta be very careful here.

"Dog," he perks up at my whisper, I point a finger very deliberately at the ground, "Here, stay here."

He sits obligingly, and I take very tentative steps forward. There are still zombies on the ground in the room over here, I cover my mouth with one hand, for all the good it does, the fumes are almost choking.

How long ago was the spill? Did the weirdo with the shitty laser do this before he died?

Nearly into the room, one of the 'dead' zombies starts making moves, and I get a very, very bad idea. I take three steps to get out of the room and into a closet nearby, then I fire blindly into the kerosene, hoping for a spark.

I get one.

The room goes up in flames, and I can hear a lot of moaned cries of pain. There were more in there, one figure, cloaked in flames, comes out of the room and my 10 mm puts him out of his misery.

Two more hear the commotion from down the hall, Dog make quick work of one, and leaning out the door I nail the other as it tries to jump in on Dog's fight.

Okay.

Go team.

I check Dog to make sure he's okay, and if the tail wagging is any indication, he's getting a real kick out of all the sneaking around and zombie murder, which, good for him I guess. Something tells me there'll be plenty of it to go around.

With my partner secure, I head into the now cooled and somewhat less smoky room to see what kind of supplies I'm got.

Right away I can tell most these crates are empty, and those that aren't are filled with files and paperwork. In the back of the room is an old steamer trunk, and another dead not-zombie lying over it.

I'm pretty sure he was dead before I set the room on fire, there would have been more shouting I think.

I really hope anyway.

Clutched in his hand is a holotape labelled Josh. I pop it in to the Pip-boy.

"Came back yesterday with Emma. Everyone's gone. Looks like they left in a hurry and had one hell of a fight. Feral corpses everywhere. Emma and I searched for anything that might tell us where they went. Only thing we found was Anthony. Must've been bad. They never would've left his body there. I sent Emma down to the loading docks to wait for me while I check on some things. We won't stay long, just want to get Anthony's body and... wait... The ferals are back. Fuck me."

Okay.

A lot there to process.

At least I didn't kill him.

I'll process it later, I think. Salvaging now, complex shit later. The trunk next to Josh is filled with more bullets, an improvised pipe gun with a nice set of sights, and a very nice piece of combat armor, left arm covering.

I snag it all and move on. Rest in peace Josh. If Emma is alive I'll find her at some point and let her know.

I return to the central stockroom and go to make my way the other direction, the right side of the store. I think the break room is probably over here, so maybe I can scrounge more supplies.

Down the other hall the first thing I notice is more kerosene. I guess Emma wanted to cover her trail? Leave Josh over there some kind of trap to cover his back? Carefully I step into it and move forward, I know the robot was over here, I have no idea how it avoided the ground with its shots, but hopefully everything's dead.

Across the way I can see a hole in the wall leading to a fridge and some nice chairs. Breakroom for sure. But before the break room, the generator room. There are a few cabinets on the walls, probably some general maintenance stuff. This is likely the maintenance room for the whole building. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the National Science Foundation and more than a few of the prominent public universities, care and maintenance of bog-standard fusion generators is still beyond the reach of most people with a high school education.

These days, probably beyond the standard of most people in general.

Are there high schools in this terrible murder-future? Are there schools?

Fuck, who knows?

I move to the generators. One is clearly slaved to the other, and the far one is the master with the fusion core igniter. The core is supposed to spark and maintain the fusion process, so naturally the core is a very key part I'll need to one day make my own.

I'll probably need to raid a library or two. I know that before the war it was uncommon, but not rare, for a person to maintain their own generators, and that was before the workbenches ever had the chance to become common, so I suppose I have better odds than most. It can't be too rough to make your own from scratch, right?

I go to claim the core, but before I can do anything, the theoretically dead body on the floor in front of the core interface becomes a very real and living murderous-dead-zombie body.

Yay.

Before it can sit up I put four shots into it.

Then it sits up, which, like, what the hell.

As it stands I put the rest of my current magazine into it, and we're still not at the point where this fucking thing is staggered by what I've done.

Stage two then, I suppose.

I wave Dog away. I can only guess that the kerosene is as strong in his nose as it is in mine, because he seems to immediately catch my drift. Before we've even left the puddle, I'm firing behind me at the ground.

My third shot catches just as Dog and I make it out of the puddle, and quick as I can, I scuff my feet across the way to keep the fire from spreading to my footsteps and his adorable little paw prints.

The zombie is stumbling at us, fully aflame and almost shrieking, as it get next to the edge of the fire, I pistol whip it back into its pyre, and it falls to the ground. The kerosene quickly runs out, and as the smoke clears and the flames die, Dog and I are at the ready.

The fucking thing is still moving!

It looks decidedly crisp, but even as bots of it flake off, it's stirring and making moves to get back to its feet.

Now, I decide, is a fine time for my last two shotgun shells. From the shitty string I used to tis it around my back, I pull the sawed off, and stepping up to this monster among fucking monsters, I let both barrels rip into its head.

And it stops moving.

Fuck.

I lean on the only slightly scorched counter, careful not to bang my head on the hanging cabinet. Dog presses himself against my leg, and seems to be catching his breath. The building is back to relative silence, the only sounds are the creaking joints of the robot out in the main room, and panting from next to me.

"Rough day, eh?"

Dog looks up at me, head at an angle.

"I used to shop here. I swear it wasn't this difficult to get food before."

He shakes his head and sneezes.

"It was a little pricey, but not, ya know..."

I sweep my hand at the tableau before us.

Hup, okay, up and at them, let's do this.

I go and actually pull the core out. Thankfully it was made with an intentionally over simplified interface. You hit 'Eject', 'Cycle Core', and 'Eject', a twist and a pop, and voila.

I take a moment to reload another magazine with some of the bullets I've found, and I reload my pistol.

Heading over to the hole in the wall, I take a look across the breakroom. There's a hallway going to some offices to my right, and a pretty much bare room in front of me.

In the offices, a nice cappuccino machine, a teddy bear in handcuffs (Not engaging on this), a nice chemistry set-up, and nothing.

In the breakroom. Nothing.

In the break room's bathroom, a toilet filled with sugar bombs, long since decayed. And. Nothing.

Also, not engaging.

I head back to the generator room, downstairs, and out to the loading dock. I've covered the whole building, just this one last place and I'm done here. I've got a good haul, but if I'm exceptionally lucky there's a crate of Salisbury down there.

In the loading dock, I find a dead woman who looks like she's from some kind of laser-future Little House on the Prairie. I guess good news for me, I don't have to work to find Emma, she's dead too.

Two more zombies slip out from underneath a derelict pick-up, but by this point Dog and I are old hands at this. I nail one while he pulls the second one down, and we finish it off together. In Emma's top pocket I can see another holotape.

"What the hell is Josh doing? He's been gone for over an hour. We need to get out of here. The guys are thinking we're already at Concord. If Josh would hurry his ass up, maybe we can get there in time. Shit, gunfire. Not good. Josh!"

She sounds _really_ upset for someone speaking into a recorder. I'm sure it's bad luck to think ill of the dead, but wow, drama queen.

I snigger as I rifle through her pockets, but as I pull what appears to be fifteen bottle caps held together in a makeshift duct tape container, I realize that I'm laughing at a woman's last moments and picking over her somewhat fresh dead body.

I'm still not handling the end of the world very well.

Dog sniffs about the room at my direction, and we discover that there isn't any food here. Whoever preceded Emma, Josh, and Anthony cleaned this place out before I even left the Vault.

Right, well, we got a lot of food, enough to keep the pair of us going for a few days. Now we gracefully take the back exit, and head home.

I hope.

I get the big haulage doors open with a terminal behind the dead woman, and cringe at the noise it produces. Home is past the building to my left, and up a series of tall cliff/steppe things. I carefully walk up a few downed trees and before I get close to home, I stop at a power line tower.

I carefully lay in the dirt, Dog on his belly next to me.

If I had thought of it sooner, I would have stopped at the door, or tried to cut through the city. I need to make sure that no one can trace me back to the Drive-In. We lay there for half an hour, silently.

I'm thankful Dog is smart on top of his being a super-dog, I think he knows what's up.

We can hear gunshots from the city, but no more nukes. I can only hope they've got a very limited supply. Dog's ear perk a few times, but neither of us hear or see anything.

Good enough.

Over the hill, through the wreckage, and to home I go. I trip the switch, head inside, and close the door.

I store my loot in a locker near the door, and collapse in the corner on my mattress.

Dog noses his bowl over, spying what I've got in my hand. With a smile I crack one of the two Nuka-Cola Quantums I found.

We share a bottle and recover from our ordeal. I pick a few dead cinders from his fur, and rest my head against him.

Good god, it's only like Two-thirty.

* * *

[A/N]: Have I mentioned that Nora Rigg, is named for the actress Nora's model is based off of, Diana Rigg? She was a bond girl, she was in the original British show The Avengers, she's done a hell of a lot of other film and TV appearances, and most recently she has been in Game of Thrones as Olenna Tyrell. She's pretty cool.


	8. Chapter 8

The Tale of Nora Rigg -/- Chapter Eight

* * *

Okay.

What have I learned?

Zombies aren't a huge threat on their own, but I need to watch myself when they come in a group. Almost every hit I took in SD's was from three or four of them coming at me at once. I need a more powerful gun, and I need more ammo for the sawed off.

Generally, I need better gear.

It would great if I could get more protective gear. I've got a nice metal forearm cover. A bracer? Whatever, I've got a nice forearm cover for my right arm, and I found that nice piece of combat armor for my left arm. I would feel a lot better with some kind of torso covering, and maybe some shin guards or something? I did ding myself nicely on the shin. A good bruise, but not nearly bad enough to be worth my very limited supply of stimpacs.

I have the horrible feeling that before I'm done I'll end up in a full set of soccer goalie padding.

Okay.

So what can I do for supplies?

I've got the hundred bottle caps from Psychotic Old Lady Number One, Trudy over at the Drumlin. I also have probably a thousand actual dollars in various denominations and conditions. Trudy isn't a bad thought actually. She said she had a shop, and she might have bullets or a few shotgun shells if I'm lucky.

I trace a route back over to the diner, they are pretty much my neighbors after all, skirting the radioactive pond and outcropping as I go. For the end of the world, this place isn't so bad. It's October, but in May this place might be green and relatively nice. The Drumlin isn't even that bad, their neat patio tables and drive-thru might actually have been attractive in another light and- aw hell, who am I kidding. This place was a dump before nukes fell on this cursed Earth.

A couple years ago, a couple hundred years ago, they caught a kid making some kind of Jet derivative in the kitchen during the graveyard shift. A cop drove by and happened to recognize the smell floating out of the kitchen.

I pass by the very open windows, around towards the entrance, and don't immediately see anyone. Maybe they have a bunker or something during the day? I hadn't looked around that much on my first pass through here, they might have a bell I have to ring or something?

Or it could be the Crazy Bitch out front.

I round the building and a woman that looks like she's made a gas mask out of a cloth sack and some tubing she found is taking pot-shots into the diner. I take cover at the edge of the building and take careful aim, dog presses against me, tense like a coiled spring as he waits for me to make my move.

The bag-headed woman isn't shouting, I see no making of demands. Trudy struck me as a hard case trader, her kid was definitely in some trouble, but surely there can't be _that_ many drug dealers in the fucking wastes?

I clip Crazy Bitch's left shoulder and Dog goes off like a rocket. He plants on the decrepit guard railing at the edge of the lot and launches himself off into Crazy, they both go down into the dust. I sprint over to follow up, but dog has it well in hand. I can see her blood soaking the dry ground next to where his teeth are stuck deep in her arm.

I put one into her head, it knocks her back, her skull bounces off the ground and then suddenly she is very, very still.

God damn it.

I've fucking killed again.

Dog shakes his grip on her, and her body jerks in a disgusting parody of life. I pat his head soothingly and whisper at him, "Good boy, we've done it, let go."

And he does. Shaking his head, like he's trying to get rid of the bloodlust. He chuffs, and stands, turning to the diner. Trudy and Druggie are there, at the window.

From inside the diner I hear a familiar tune float on the breeze, " _When Missus Ned McLean, God Bless her, Can get Russian Reds to Yes her, then I suppooooose, Anything Goes..._ "

Fuck you Cole Porter, it's the apocalypse. Anything goes.

Standing, I dust myself off. The bodies of Wolfgang and Woman Whose Name I Wish I Had Learned are gone. I have a sudden and terrible suspicion that they were eaten. Oh God Trudy is a cannibal.

As I head into the Diner, Druggie is sitting in the back again, fighting the shakes. Shakes, which are a potential sign of long term cannibalism perhaps?

Trudy seems rock steady, which I honestly can't say is either a comfort or a warning sign. Shouldn't she show the least bit of concern that she was just getting shot at by some random woman, and that I just murdered someone in front of her shop with my dog?

If she doesn't say anything, I won't say anything.

Also I will try my best to never, ever come back here.

"Hi."

Trudy plants her hands on the counter in front of her, and with a very weary eye says, "If you're here to trade, let's trade."

Trade. Right.

"Let's see what you've got."

She pulls out a drawer of ammunition, as if she can guess my preference, and leads with, "A little bit of everything..."

As it happens, she does have shotgun shells. I grab a box of them, alongside a box of 10 mm. For their apparent age, both boxes have held up well. With an eye on the Old Lady to see if she objects, I pop the box of shotshells and slit open the wax paper covering them.

Another ghost from my past, _the_ past now, floats before my eyes.

Nathan was very particular about his ammunition. Yet another left-over from Anchorage. The Chinese got the idea from us, of course. Nathan spent a lot of time reading when he got back, and the idea dated back to World War II, but most records point back to Vietnam, Operation Eldest Son.

The Chinese would plant boxes of bullets and shotshells in trenches they knew would be overrun. Their little gifts would be filled with high explosives instead of gunpowder though, and if you were very lucky all it would do is ruin your gun in the middle of a war zone.

Naturally after he got out, Nathan was very, very particular.

Check for corrosion, Chinese steel and brass being what they were, and always, always check the headstamp. That was what had saved him a dozen times. The Chinese saboteurs were very clever, but they had never been clever enough to fake the Lake City Army Ammunition headstamps. Shotshells were larger, a bit more room and so a bit easier to identify.

I don't recognize the label on the shell in my fingers, but Nathan would have been satisfied by the even letter spacing, clear English, and tiny little 'made in USA' stamped along the lower edge.

They look legit.

I pile the ammo I want, and move it to one side. In the other I place three hundred dollars. I imagine the prices have gone up a hair since the end of days, and at Trudy's raised brow, I begin to speculate about what kinds of inflation I'm really looking at.

"Toilet paper's well and good Honey, but I need caps."

"Caps?"

"Caps."

I sigh, "Right."

I dig into my pockets for the bottle caps she gave me for killing the last guy to threaten her doorstep, "So let's say for just a minute here, that maybe I'm new in town," She looks me up and down, I can feel her eyeing the vault suit, maybe I needn't have been so circumspect, "Why do you want bottle caps and not dollars?"

She sweeps my cash a bit further to the side, and with a very put-upon tone begins picking through the collection of caps she gave me, and what I took off dead Anthony. Her fingers move like they're used to this, but the way they hesitate briefly as she passes the newer looking caps makes me think maybe she's helping me here, "Everyone takes caps, Honey. Caps are money, caps are life."

She looks back up at me, and I watch her lips curl around the unfamiliar word, "Caps are currency."

"I'll cut you a deal on this one, this is the second time you've come by and help me and the boy, but you need to wise up quick. I can hear your generator all the way over here at night. If I can, then so can others.

"If you're using power that's all well and good, and that neat little purifier you got running, that's well and good too. You gotta be careful," she inclines her head to the body out front, "That's what happens when you got nice things, that's why the boy and I do without, you gotta defend'em. You be careful."

I can see it in the lines of her face, this is as close as she gets to actually caring I'd bet. She's got good advice besides.

I don't feel the need to say anything after her ominous little warning, and she doesn't seem to feel the need either. I load a magazine, and I reload the sawed-off.

With a nod I head out.

Work to be done. Defenses. It was on my mind, but maybe my third murder in a week has brought it into focus. I need to clear all the zombies out of the area, and I need something more substantial than a hydraulic door.

But I have some thoughts.

I can't make guns with the workshop, but I can make motion controlled searchlights. I take the searchlight form, which I already have the right programming control and base for, and put a trigger mechanism on it next to a tube, and a hopper of ball bearings. Two hours of work, maybe three, and I can have a shotgun turret protecting my home.

I just need more circuitry, more copper, and more general base material. Regrettably cars aren't quite the same as auto-turrets.

So I'm back to scavenging.

Just northeast of the Drive-in is Bedford station, which was a cargo transport hub for a long, long time before the war. As good a place to start as any, and the more space around the Drive-In that I patrol and clear out, the safer I am.

I leave heading straight east. The land goes into a bit of a rise, sort of a ridge that keeps going north. Two hundred years ago trains ran along the tracks tracing the rise every day, these days it's just rusted fence and dying plants.

And mutant cattle.

Why am I surprised.

On the other side of the road, across two fences and a set of guard rails, three huge mutated cows seem to be taking shelter from the wind in the leeside of the hill, behind some rocks. I approach carefully, my horrified curiosity briefly overwhelming my caution. As I step closer I clack my gun deliberately against my metal armguard to announce myself. For their part, the poor mutants don't seem to care.

Dog is being remarkably calm about this, which I would not have foreseen. Clearly these things are either known to him, or they're common enough to not be worth doggy comment. He walks among them, smelling about, and they don't seem to even blink at him either.

Their fur, or hair, or whatever, is incredibly patchy, and the skin that isn't hidden by sickly patches of fuzz looks... lumpy.

I'm not at my strongest when describing lesions, or whatever this mess is. Pockets of puss or something seem to dot their necks and sides. I don't know what the hell I'm looking at, but it's fucking gross. If that weren't enough they have horns of a bunch of different size growing out of a lot of different places on their heads, and their udders have way, way too many nipples.

Oh Yes, the heads. Did I mention the heads, like how they each have two heads each? What the fuck.

When I've had enough (when the smell begins to hit), I head around the rocks towards the track.

To the west side of the ridge, a fallen sky bridge, and down the tracks a bit there's also one of those anachronistic coal towers. If I'm remembering right, before the war there was a city wide vote to turn it into a water delivery tower so it could give fusion reaction mass to trains and be relevant again. The historical society folks turned the whole vote into a shit show and it went nowhere. I don't think I'll be getting anything from it now in any case.

To the east, the ridge itself, a forest area, and along the track the command tower and actual rail substation.

Of course in between the tracks and rail cars there are like five dead-heads wandering around.

Thankfully they don't see me.

I edge over to the boxcar nearest me, and with as much precision as I can muster, I nail each of the ones I can see. The gun ain't exactly quiet, but I'm far enough away that none of them pick up on my presence before they die, again.

When it's been a minute, and nothing else has moved, I head over to the nearest box car.

Inside: eight empty bottle of Nuka-Cola, a tin containing twenty-two caps, some drugs in a cooler, and the weirdest fucking gun I've ever seen.

The thing is some kind of top-loaded pressure vessel that appears to shoot railroad spikes, which is something I have no idea how to engage with. It looks like it would explode every time you pull the fucking trigger.

No, not engaging.

I sling it over my shoulder for later, and move on.

Just down the tracks is the command tower, and I approach it very carefully. If the Super Duper Mart taught me anything, it's that the undead are everywhere, and I don't want to get surprised by anyone today. I make my way up the tower, gun leading and clearing all my corners like a proper weekend warrior idiot, only to find an empty room and a blinking terminal.

The computer seems to control the spotlights outside, which are on in the daytime for some reason, and it has a holotape in it. Being the closet voyeur I am, I yank the tape and stick it in my Pip Boy.

"It's half-past. She's late," a nervous voice, maybe some kind of clandestine meeting?

"No. Something's wrong," a confident voice, this guy's done this before.

"Someone's coming. Look. Five of them."

"It's a trap. Dammit, they've got us surrounded," oh shit, this got real.

"What do we do?"

"I'll draw them off. Give me a count of ten, then break for the tree line."

"What? Dutchman, I-"

"There's no time. Good luck, A9."

"10... 9... 8... 7..."

A9, who or whatever that is, stops counting when an assault rifle fires in the background, then his voice pops back in, "No! - No! No, I'm not going back! I can't! I won't!"

Ooooh-kay.

Now I feel bad.

A9's last words also have an awful lot of terrible connotations, especially given that it's a male voice. Some kind of organized labor-slavery? Shit.

I need those turrets, and I need them now.

Just in front of the tower is a non-zombie dead body, from the smell, maybe a day or two old. He's notable for the whole not-zombie thing, but also for the fact that he's got laser burns all over him. In a top pocket he's got a well folded note, and as I read it more details come to light.

This is Dutchman.

He doesn't look like much, but he gave his life to help someone, and that isn't nothing. What's more, he's part of a group. Delivering 'packages', and they've got runners. More is going on in the Commonwealth than I thought.

If it weren't for the obvious laser wounds, I'm just paranoid enough to think Scar-face might have a hand in this somewhere.

I close Dutchman's eyes, and check to see if the coast is relatively clear. Seems to be, I'm not seeing walkers, with a grunt I heft the body and pull it over into the nearby box car. The doors look to be in working order, and a good man shouldn't be eaten by bugs or the undead.

I'm breaking my 'No Dead Body Touching' rule hard for this, this body is ripe, but honestly when I get shot out here at some point, I can only hope someone does this for me.

The Boxcar doesn't have anything interesting in it, empty barrels and metal packing crates that I have no hope of opening. I prop him against a crate, folding his arms across his chest and propping the improvised pistol I found on him next to his hand.

Better luck in the next life, friend.

Closing both doors, I move on down the tracks.

There are two more boxcars, one of which is actually upright and open, so I aim that way. As I close two 'dead' zombies start waking up, and I pump rounds into both before they can properly stand. They stop moving, and I freeze as well.

There's no sound but the wind, but damn these fucking things are everywhere.

Nothing.

I walk the ramp and take a look around. There a Med-kit with some anti-radiation supplies, and Dutchman's last supply drop. On the other side of the car someone has spilled a _lot_ of gasoline. The temptation to set it on fire is strong, but I resist.

I walk back around the fallen boxcar and towards the station, and what should I see but another zombie, sitting on a rise and apparently hitting the ground with a rock. I am reminded, in a very troubling way, of videos I've seen of chimpanzees.

I dust it quickly and get closer to the building.

Dog follows at my heels, and seems to squeeze close to my side. He cocks his head, maybe exaggerating a bit for my effect, I take my cue and become still.

There's the gentle thud of my heartbeat, pounding in my ears in a not entirely unpleasant way, wind playing over the uneven edges of the marble blocks loaded on the station platform, creaking in the nearly dead forest to my left, and there.

Scrabbling.

An unshod foot sticking slightly on a concrete floor.

I cock my own head, searching for the signal, straining against the noise...

Two in the building, maybe two more to the left? One on the platform itself, at least another out beyond toward the fallen skybridge.

I place a hand at the reassuring pressure of Dog at my side. How to do this? I sniff the air, I can either catch notes from the pool of gas two train cars and forty yards over, or there's a closer source. From where I stand, I can barely catch the sheen of more spilled fuel on the platform itself, and I get a very excellent Idea.

I shift my hip into dog and he looks up, I indicate the left, and lower my hand slowly, palm down, to the ground.

We need to compare notes on hand signs beforehand next time.

I think he gets my idea, because he slinks off towards the forest, taking a longer path around the building on the other side. I move closer to the building, and from a pocket I pull an empty Nuka-Cola bottle with the vague hope that I haven't gotten worse at throwing things in the last two hundred years, because if I'm being honest I wasn't great back then. I give the empty a toss at the end of the platform, and hope.

The bottle hits short of where I was aiming, but it's almost better that way. The piercing clink of the glass hitting, and then the continuous sharp cracks of the stupid rocket fins smacking the ground as it rolls unsteadily into the corner are all almost too loud.

I hear more feet than I want to try counting coming my way, and when I see my first hairless and terrible victim, I put both barrels into the fuel, and light it all up.

Two succumb to the flames immediately, two more are moaning just out of my sight around the corner.

I crack the breach, and batt away the two hot shells as they pop out at me. As I take a step in I slam two more in place and close the sawed off back up. Turning the corner I see the survivors, with a twitch I unleash both barrels, and then sling the sawed off. Hefting my pistol, I sprint through the remaining flames towards the door to the platform warehouse building.

Inside I can hear Dog growling a storm up, and on a wild guess, he could probably use support.

I throw my shoulder into the door, and in the eternal war between door and man, door wins again. It's not yielding to my weight, it's got to be barred, and through a crack in the wall I can see two monsters have Dog pressed against the back wall, taking turns distracting and striking at him.

I cross the rest of the platform and jump off the landing over a cracked marble block.

Luck! There's another door in the side, I skid sideways in the dirt stopping in front of the door, and unload into the pair that are harassing my Dog.

As they fall I go down on a knee and check the area. Nothing seems to be moving across the forest I can see and the rest of the way up the hill.

Nothing seems to be moving anywhere.

I can hear the scratching of Dog's paws as he heads out of the building, back to my side. His comforting weight presses into my back as he leans against me.

I turn and give him a good scratch around the ears, followed by checking him gently over for anything big. He's got bruises along his neck, if the cringing at my gentle probing is any indicator anyway, but he'll live.

"What do you think, anything else?"

He chuffs at me, leaning a bit harder into my side.

Good.

I go through my pockets, looking for one of our nice new packages of steak, and when I find one I crack the foil open and leave it on box for him. As Dog begins sniffing and licking at his treat, I go into the building and begin my search for salvage.

There's a few bits and bobs I can use, but nothing that will actually solve my defense problems. There a working computer, and for a moment I feel hope that I can trace a shipment of something useful somewhere, lord knows I can find a use for drill parts and 24 spools of electrical wire, but I can't parse the meaning of the destination code 'NHMUSA', and they naturally don't have relevant files anywhere.

Worth a try.

After spending fifteen minutes trying to open one of the sealed metal crates with no tools, Dog pops his head inside and gives me a woof.

He's not wrong, it's time to move on.

Of course as soon as I collect my loot and step outside, there an explosion to the west.

That's going to end well.

From where I stand, the scenery to the west doesn't look like fun. Or rather like any kind of tactically advantageous territory.

I'm looking at a depression between two spurs off a ridge, which in terms I wouldn't have known had I not taken sophomore level Geography, means a low area between two ridge-y offshoots going down away from a ridge.

This is one of those rare scenarios in which I can use the phrase 'topographically simple, geographically complex'. A moment that I can also characterize as 'pointlessly complicated', and 'proves the point of all the people that protested Harvard during the food riots'. A moment where I feel bad on the inside.

Anyway.

This close to the Drive-In I have to investigate. If I've got an infestation of fuckers with hand grenades, that's something which is probably best to know now rather than later, and while I'm not especially keen on going to confront someone which has a proven history with explosives, I am compelled to head west into the fun little forest-y depression.

At the lowest point in the depression, maybe about halfway across, there is a very ramshackle little cabin built around a flatbed train car. I head over and pass into it. There's another giant roach, but a quick application of boot solves the problem, and I take cover against the far wall, pausing a moment to gather my bearings and see if I can hear anything else from the direction of the explosion.

I leave the cabin, and sneaking now to avoid making as much noise as possible, I follow along the bottom of the depression, now pointing me towards Concord. Dog and I make it almost all the way to the end, where the depression curves sharply up and becomes a road, before we hear someone just pushing their way through bushes and cursing along the top of the ridge to the south of us.

I put a hand on Dog's back, directing him away from me again, further to the north. We can get this guys from two sides again, and as I have yet to accidently shoot Dog, he's still definitely on board.

I try and move stealthily up the hill, and the terrifying rubbery vegetation certainly helps, but before I get a good view of the guy Dog barks loud and clear from his other side, and the cursing coming from my mystery friend takes on a darker tone.

Abandoning stealth, I sprint over the ridge with my 10mm drawn.

The raider, also definitely a 'she', catches me immediately, and prioritizes me over the dulcet tones of Dog's growl. Big mistake. I throw myself into the dirt as shot pass over me, she's definitely using one of the improvised pipe guns, and I wait a moment for Dog to get into position.

"OFF! GET OFF!"

Aaaand there it is, the sound of Dog's attack are music in my ears as I jump to my feet and sprint back over.

Dog is pulling one of her legs from behind, bringing her to her knees and not improving her calm. Thankfully she's distracted enough for me to get into position. With a swing she brings her pistol into contact with dog's face, driving him off with a yelp, but that just leaves her wide open for me to fill her with lead.

It takes me four shots, but suddenly she is dead, I am alive, and Dog gets a stimpac because, "Who'sagoodboy, who'sagoodboy, You!"

Dog enjoys both the chemical assistance, and the celebratory ear scratches.

On our victim, my fourth murder in the last week and half, what should I spy but a hand grenade, and a nice lightweight and reinforced piece of combat armor, left leg set. Shin guards for everyone!

Dog and I sit for a moment, catching our breaths.

His keen ears don't detect anything, and my own admittedly lacking senses have nothing as well, so we're probably safe-ish. I reload and keep my gun handy in any case.

It's kinda a nice day. I break out more snacks for me, some Dandy Boy's from the Super Duper, and Dog steals a few despite his having already eaten. He seems immune to my glare. Shameless little thing.

With a huff and a shared filtered water, we get back to it. Before we leave I close the eyes of number Four. She definitely shot first, setting aside the blood stains on her clothes and explosives in her pocket. Self-Defense is a lot easier to sell on this one, just as Number Three.

Four is still a lot of murdering for just a couple days.

Dog and I point ourselves back to the Drive-In. Taking to the ridge top and following the road back towards home.

We pass a skeleton next to a phone booth. The booth cover has been blasted away, otherwise surprisingly intact. I wonder if she was calling someone when the bombs fell? It was all pretty sudden, did she even know?

It doesn't matter.

Dog and I leave the road, heading direct to the drive in, down the steep slope at the edge of the lot. I didn't get any of the supplies I really needed for my turret idea. I'm not leaving home-base undefended when I head out into Boston towards Diamond City, as my shitty found magazine delicately informs me is the real population center around here.

I'll have to scavenge around Lexington. There was a garage there, and I have a vague memory of electronics shops.

A quick look at my pip boy tells me I've spent most of the day fighting and exploring, so now I think may be a good time to get some sleep. Tomorrow I get the pleasure of scavenging for parts in an abandoned city, which my extensive experience with pulp sci-fi informs me will be both a quick and pleasant experience. Definitely not going to have to confront zombies and gangs of cannibals.

At least I cleverly/thoughtlessly built my home without windows. This way I won't have to be bothered by the last hour or two of light. Just straight to sleep in preparation for the shit-show that will be tomorrow.

* * *

[A/N]: Please let me know if you like this style of action writing.

I recently discovered that I can actually just play the game and video-cap what I'm doing, so I don't need to pause the game and write, and then pause the game and write. The first seven chapters took about 11 hours of time in game because I used that method, and to be honest, it was not fun at all. This way I can play, and still have a good pause-able baseline to write from.


End file.
